Last Left Turn Before Hooterville

The Dance

2011-10-11T23:15:00.000-07:00

I've been so beaten down; so tired; so frustrated and angry. When I started Hooterville in November of 2004, I thought I was angry, frustrated and confused, but that was nothing compared to what has happened in the last two years, when the chickens finally came home to roost - when the last available dollar had been wrung out of the middle class and we were hung out to dry.

As anyone who has visited my blog knows by now, I have not spent much time writing in the last couple of years. I wrote my book "The Price of Right: How the Conservative Agenda Has Failed America (and Always Will)" during 2006-2007, while I was working a day job and gigging at night and being a mom to 3 kids. Somehow, I was able to find a way to do all that and write on a consistent basis as well.

But the housing market crashed and the economy crashed with it; our predatory mortgage loan became harder and harder to pay as my hours got shorter and shorter. A management change at my job made it very clear that older, more expensive teachers such as myself were no longer wanted, and it would be just a matter of time before I got the boot. There were cobwebs in the mailbox that, once upon a time, was stuffed with my husband's residual checks - cobwebs now only disturbed by bills and scam solicitations.

Then, the foreclosure notices started coming in, and my husband and I began to do The Dance.

You know The Dance - it has many names, like the "Bankruptcy Boogaloo", the "Chapter 13 Cha-Cha", the "Please-Don't-Turn-Our-Power-Off Pirouette", the "Work-Till-You-Drop Watusi", the "Juggle-the-Bills Jitterbug", the "Credit-Card Conga", the "Second-Mortgage Shuffle", the "Hope-This-Deposit-Goes-Through-Before-That-Check-Gets-Cashed Hustle", the "Try-To-Stretch-The-Dollar-Till-It-Screams Tango", the "Just-Go-Without Jig", the "Put-Off-Going-To-The-Doctor Polka", the "Late-Payment Limbo" (also known as "How Low Can You Go?") and, of course, everyone's favorite, the "Bill-Collector Bolero".

Whatever you call it, whatever your particular dance is, The Dance will wear you out. Like the Red Shoes, it makes you dance and dance and dance and dance until you collapse. And you still haven't gotten anywhere; you're still right where you started, except you're dizzy and exhausted.

You'd think that with all this free time from not working, it would be easy to get things done, but that is not the case. The bills start piling up on the kitchen table, but you can't even look at them when you don't have anything to pay them with. All you can think about is how you can make some money right now - now, before they cut off the cable/power/gas; now, before your bank balance gets so low that a $5 charge will turn into a $35 overdraft fee; now, so you can give your kid lunch money, so you can replace the tire that just blew out - the spare that you've been putting off replacing with a real tire for three months.

You take any job or project or gig you can get, no matter how small or cheap; if you get some work, you put in four or five times the amount of time and effort that you're getting paid for, in the hopes that the people you're working for will be impressed enough to give you some more work. You stay up till 3 or 4 or 5 in the morning on the computer, working on things that you might be able to make some money on. You put things off for a day or two, like going to the grocery store; or for a year or two, like the dentist (what's the Musician's Dental Plan? Chew on the other side); some things you avoid altogether, like replacing or fixing things that break around the house. Broken window? Duct tape and cardboard. Broken doorknob? Duct tape and cardboard. After a while you stop seeing them. You stop seeing a lot of things, including your friends - you don't want to invite anyone over, and when the family is sharing one old car on its last legs, driving around for social occasions seems a little self-indulgent.

When you spend every day like this, for a few years, as I have, finding the wherewithal to do something so immediately un-financially-rewarding as writing a book or even blogging seems to be out of reach. Although technically unemployed, dancing The Dance and staying on my feet has taken every ounce of energy I have.

Being out of work is a full-time job.

Having said that, let me also say that I in no way feel sorry for myself or that I am deserving of pity. I may have to put off going to the grocery store, but I eventually get there. My husband and I are eating; our kids are eating. Our house is falling apart, but we're still in it. And I have a husband whom I love and who loves me back, who is my rock; I have kids who are so good-hearted, uncomplaining, helpful and loving that they take my breath away. We have family and friends who will always be there for us. We have it better than a lot of people, and most of the people I know personally (except the wealthiest of my friends) are in very much the same boat.

This is what the 99% is all about.

So many of us have been dancing The Dance for years, and I have been wondering what it would take to make people realize that it's not their fault; that we have been stolen from by the most brazen, audacious criminals in the world. They have stolen the money, the jobs, the health, and the houses of an entire segment of society! That, my friends, is thievery on so magnificent a scale that it almost defies description - that makes the current denizens of our prisons look like toddlers stealing cookies.

Take my money, my job, my health, my house, and my hope - now, what's left?

My family, my friends, my principles, and my daily decision to appreciate what I have that the crooks cannot steal - unless I hand it to them personally. Hope? Who needs it? What matters is whether you do what's right and fight what's wrong - with hope or without it. Hope is not a bad thing in and of itself but if you only fight if you have hope, then it becomes a crutch, not a motivator.

But I do feel hope when I see the 99% like me standing up, speaking out, getting mad, and fighting back. Is it naïve of me? Perhaps - but it surely beats the alternative, which has been going on for far too long. If I have to dance The Dance, at least I'm not alone - my brothers and sisters are out there dancing too, and if we hold one another's hands and lift one another up, we can start dancing a new dance - a beautiful, powerful dance that will move us all forward together, instead of spinning around in circles by ourselves till we collapse.

Afterbirth

2011-05-04T22:47:00.000-07:00

Recently I posted on my Facebook page about the disappointment and disgust I felt when I had to watch President Obama produce his birth certificate, and, what was even worse, watch the unspeakably vile Donald Trump crow (yes, that word was deliberately chosen) about it, believing that he alone had the power to lift his leg on the President of the United States.

My heart broke for my black brothers and sisters, who are affected by this foulness in a way that the rest of America is not.

Let's call a spade a spade.

This 'Birther' crap is racism, pure and simple, and Donald Trump's actions were racist. I don't care what you say, you racist motherfucker. Actions speak louder than words.

The most powerful and influential black man in history was made to 'show his papers'.

This is not what it appears on the surface - not a legitimate concern about the eligibility of a politician - say, one who was born in Panama...

This is a 'dog whistle' to question the legitimacy of this President to hold his office due to his birth. Black people have been denied their human rights - the rights that the rest of native-born or even non-native-born Americans have been granted as a matter or course - due to their birth: the fact that they were born with black skin.

It was more than a slap in the face of President Obama - it was a slap in the face of every black person in America.

There are many, many people still around who have experienced racism that was written into law - 'separate but equal'. A lot of people like to pretend that we are no longer a 'racist' society, but Plessy v. Ferguson was still in force in my lifetime, and although discrimination is no longer legal it is still very much entrenched in our society.

The election of America's first black President has brought the maggots of racism crawling out of the woodwork and into the open. Yes, in past years it had become unacceptable in polite society to blatantly display racist views, but that did not mean that it was gone. It just looked bad to be too open about it. Since President Obama's election, however, we have seen more overt and open racism than we have in several generations.

And, as it always is, it is fear-based.

Many different kinds of psychological studies show that one of the signal differences between liberal and conservative personalities is that conservatives are more strongly affected and motivated by fear. A new study by the University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience shows a biological correlation as well.

An article in the London Telegraph explains that self-described conservatives

"have brains with larger amygdalas, almond shaped areas in the centre of the brain often associated with anxiety and emotions. On the other hand, they have a smaller anterior cingulate, an area at the front of the brain associated with courage and looking on the bright side of life."

When you are afraid, the most important thing becomes relieving that fear - and rationality has nothing to do with it. One of the results of a fear-driven personality is acceptance of inequality. When your worldview is laid out in a vertical, hierarchical way, inequality is built into it.

This particular subset of nutballs - birthers and Tea Partyers - are people whose fears are assuaged by belonging to these groups, and who equate safety and comfort with sameness and obedience. They offer both a set of simple, unambiguous beliefs, and an enemy to unite against. President Obama is the ultimate embodiment of the "Other"; someone 'not like us', therefore Un-American. Once that decision has been made - that Obama is 'the other' and therefore unworthy of respect or obedience, there is no fact that will dislodge it. In fact, a person with this type of personality derives more safety and comfort the more ridiculous and illogical the premise that they are asked to accept - it means they are more obedient, and therefore safer.

Racism is and always has been the result of fear, and has always been used by those with money and power to control and manipulate people who are easy targets because of their discomfort with ambiguity and strong need for certainty, which make them prone to seek out someone or something 'above' them who will give them that certainty and assuage their fear. Once they accept an authority or ideology, they are both obedient to that authority and hostile and aggressive towards anyone who is opposed by the authority.

A poll taken after the release of Barack Obama's 'long-form' birth certificate indicates that 16% of all voters and 30% of Republicans do not believe President Barack Obama has proven he was born in the U.S., even after release of his long-form birth certificate.

But the fact that he was pressured into having to release it at all is what is the most revolting - that and the fact that the Republicans have no shame about going to the lowest place that humans can go in order to out-crazy each other in the race for the 2012 nomination and tapping into the basest of emotions in order to advance themselves politically.

Racism? It's the new black!

Intelligence. Not All-Out War On Some Hapless Country.

2011-05-02T10:17:00.000-07:00

Sigh.

Why I Am A Liberal

2011-04-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

Well, friends, I am starting to string some sentences together to start working on my next book, which will be called "Now, What's Left?"

The first thing I have to do is put together a book proposal, which is kind of a big job, but - the good news is that when it's done, you've really done the hardest part of writing the book.

So, in preparation for the proposal, I'm sort of synopsizing everything that's been rattling around in my head that I want to be a part of this book, and one of the things I ended up doing was making a list of the reasons I am a liberal.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but... here goes!

This is what being a liberal means to me:

· I believe that freedom means freedom for everyone, not just me and mine;

· I believe in not only personal responsibility but shared responsibility towards the group of which I am a part;

· I believe that leadership does not equal dominance

· I believe that every person is entitled to dignity and respect, not because of what they have but because of who they are – human. I do not believe that someone who has more than I do is more worthy than I am, and I do not believe that someone who has less than I do is less worthy.

· I believe that each individual’s religious belief (or non-belief) should be respected, but it should not infringe upon others’ belief, non-belief, or personal freedom and that religion and government should be separate – for the good of both.

· I believe that the qualities of tolerance and empathy are not the same as ‘moral relativity’ (whatever that actually means), but are expressions of the Golden Rule and moral values to which I am proud to aspire.

· When people disparage ‘diversity’ (always said with the little eye-roll), I assume they prefer inbreeding.

· I believe that there are some things that government is better equipped to deal with than private enterprise; that there is room for both. I do not believe government should be run like a business, and I do not believe that private enterprise should be run like the government.

· I believe that the areas that include shared life-and-death resources (clean air, fresh water, safe food, transportation infrastructure, judicial and legal infrastructure, essential [not elective] medical care, military defense), and education for all, should be administered, overseen, and protected without a profit motive by a body that is accountable to the people – that is, government.

· I respect tradition, but not for tradition’s sake only; I embrace change, but not change for change’s sake. For each I ask myself, “Is it necessary?”

· If I claim freedom for myself, I need to extend it to others in return. Civil rights are rights conferred upon citizens, and civil marriage is one of those rights. No one should be guaranteed a religious marriage; that is up to the tenets of that particular religion and not the business of government. But civil marriage recognized by the state grants rights, benefits and responsibilities to married couples that all citizens who wish to marry the person they love should be able to benefit from – and be responsible for.

· I believe basic health care is a right, and not only that, but a benefit to society that saves money to all Americans in the long run. I believe that national single payer health care, administered (but not provided) by the government, is the most cost-effective and fair way to ensure that no person is denied care because they can’t afford it, or goes bankrupt because of an illness or accident.

The argument that health care should not be called a ‘right’ because no doctor shoud be forced to care for an ill person against their will makes no sense. Emergency rooms are already mandated to care for anyone who comes in regardless of their ability to pay; the cost is astronomical and borne by the taxpayers anyway.

No one should die because they can’t afford care, and if the costs of medical care are shared in a large enough pool that includes healthy people as well as sick people, then medical costs will be more affordale all round. This is nothing more than insurance, taken to its logical conclusion – but without the profit motive that takes precious dollars away from health care. No other industrialized nation allows insurance for profit; even private insurance is non-profit. It is immoral to me to enrich myself at the cost of human health and life. Not only that but it is a drain and an expense that society must pay for in terms of lost productivity, lost wages, families thrown into poverty (and the public dole) – so it is actually cheaper and more efficient on many, many levels for society to manage health care.

If I wish to have a 5-star hotel-room hospital experience, or get elective plastic surgery to indulge my vanity – by all means, let the market take care of that! If you want it and can afford it and an insurer wants to make a profit from that, go for it.

Private, for-profit insurance for things like cars, houses, travel, flood, hurricane, fire and other things that you choose to have in your life that cost a lot to replace is perfectly useful as far as I’m concerned, but in matters of a human life it is unconscionable.

· I believe that government is US – We the People – and, as flawed as it can be, it is answerable to us. Private enterprise in charge of public needs is NOT answerable to us (See California’s disastrous power deregulation and susequent grotesque theft from the people of CA for a good example of what the lure of the profit motive can lead to with public utilities.) Privatization is not the answer to what’s wrong with government.

· I do not believe that the Invisible Hand of the Free Market will make everything hunky-dory with the economy. I think that is a willful misinterpretation from Adam Smith that Republicans accept as fact because it favors the interests of Big Business to do so. I do not believe that ‘free markets’ are free if all the power is on one side of the equation.

· I do not believe that tax cuts for the wealthy create jobs. All they do is add to the deficit and give Republicans an excuse to cut social programs in the name of ‘deficit reduction’.

· I do not believe you can ‘cut’ your way out of a ~~depression~~ (pardon me – a recession.) by belt-tightening. Just ask Hoover – or go visit a Hooverville. I hear they’re quite the ‘coming thing’.

· I believe that workers have the right to organize and negotiate with the companies they work for. Otherwise, it becomes a race to the bottom for the cheapest labor – leading to the demise of American jobs, massive outsourcing and the demand for, not just immigrant labor, but illegal immigrant labor (basically slave labor) – as a business model! Union wages keep non-union wages high as well, leading to a strong economy where there are consumers who can afford to buy things that cost a little more. It’s a race to the top instead of the bottom.

· I also believe in reasonable regulation. If we had had reasonable regulation in place over the last 15 years, we would not be in an economic collapse only rivalled in the last century by the Great Depression. There is a middle ground between micro-managing and reasonable regulation, but the corporate powers-that-be treat any attempt to oversee financial matters as the grossest of meddling, nit-picking, and job-killing. That, of course, is their strategy. It’s called ‘working the refs’ and it has worked like a charm for them. For us? Not so much. Even a football game has rules.

· I believe that justice and the rule of law should not be for sale to the highest bidder.

· I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT CORPORATIONS SHOULD BE LEGAL PEOPLE.

· I believe that elections should be financed by the public to ensure that politicians are not purchased by corporations and that the important work of our nation is not disrupted by 24/7 fundraising once a candidate is elected. I don’t believe a congressperson should be under the thumb of corporate money, and subject to the pressure of having an opponent financed by a corporation if that congressperson doesn’t ‘play ball’. I also do not believe that there should be a revolving door between Congress and K Street once that Congressperson leaves office.

· I believe we overlook conflicts of interest at our peril.

· I do not believe that military dominance of the world is the way to keep America safe.

· I do not believe that we should ever pre-emptively attack another nation, and that war should be the last of last resorts in self-defense. Real last resort, not pretend, made-up ‘last resort’ that was actually the first resort. I wish there was no reason for war at all, but if we do go into combat, we should take care of our soldiers both in and out of the service, for as long as they need it. It is the least we can do for the men and women of whom we have asked the unspeakable. David Swanson is right; war is a crime. I wish I were smart enough to figure out how to keep our governments from engaging in them.

Well, it's a start...

Conservative Louis J. Marinelli, I Salute You.

2011-04-09T18:44:00.000-07:00

Louis J. Marinelli, a long-time opponent of same-sex marriage, and the man behind the National Organization for Marriage's 2010 "Summer for Marriage" Tour, has examined his conscience and come to the conclusion that he is in support of marriage equality.

Not only that, he is man enough to 'come out' (if I may be so bold) and state this for the record, while apologizing to those he has hurt during his fight to oppose marriage equality - the gays and lesbians (and their families) - counter-protesters whom he encountered along the path of his travels across the country.

Is he still conservative?

Of course.

As I have said many times, there are conservatives out there who are good-hearted, honest people trying the very best they know how to do what is right. While I don't agree with their ideas of what is right, I do not think they are bad people or stupid people. They are good people who seem to be wired diferently from me and my way of thinking. These are my dear family members and friends. I reserve my disapproval and condemnation for the amoral greedsters and sociopaths who know how to take advantage of the conservative desire for authority, and are no more conservative than my cat. They talk conservative because that's how they appeal to conservatives. But they have no moral compass - merely a barometer that tells them where best to apply pressure.

Real liberals and real conservatives have much in common at heart - way more, in fact, than either type has in common with the amoral greedster that has thrown all of us to the wolves in search of the last dollar that can be squeezed out of the economy and transferred up, up and away - away from the rest of us. Deep down, we share the same values, but the wiring that directs how those values are expressed can be very different.

So when I see an instance of a conservative truly looking within and, more than that, finds it within himself to nut up and acts upon what he finds there - according to his own moral compass, not 'adopting' a liberal viewpoint - I think it's important to acknowledge, applaud and appreciate this.

The reason he changed his views? Because he met and got to know gays and lesbians face to face - as real people, real Americans, not 'faceless political opponents' - not 'the other', the bad and wicked bogey-men (and -women) of his imagination. And because he has the character to act on that knowledge instead of trying to deny or ignore these realities.

Dr. Bob Altemeyer, the author ot "The Authoritarians", asserts that authoritarianism (and authoritarians, who generally self-identify as conservative) is most often strengthened by isolation from and lessened by exposure to other people, ideologies and cultures. This is why diversity is so crucial to our society.

The more that we get to know people who are not exactly like ourselves on the surface, the more that we realize that they are just like us - on the inside, where it counts.

So, conservative Louis J. Marinelli -

I salute you.

Atlantis? Sorry, MSNBC - I Beat You To It.

2011-04-01T22:14:00.000-07:00

MSNBC thinks they're all scientific and such.

Sorry, y'all, but I had it covered a while back.

(how genius am I? Not even re-cycling a post - three-cycling! That's the Hooterville way!)

Eugene V. Debs

2011-04-01T22:03:00.000-07:00

I'm just saying.

Sorry, Son - No Music Magnet For You. The Koch Bros Need To Pay Less Taxes.

2011-03-27T04:31:00.000-07:00

(cross-posted at the Smirking Chimp)

A couple of years ago, my older son got bumped out of a place at Cal State Northridge because of budget cuts. He had been accepted - recruited - into the highly-acclaimed jazz department at CSUN because of his excellence in music in high school. He was fortunate enough - and worked hard enough - to earn a place in the Hamilton Academy of Music, one of the finest public high-school music magnets in California, if not the entire country. The video I'm posting is of the award-winning performance of his Vocal Jazz group that competed in the Reno Jazz Festival, led by one of the best vocal directors I have ever heard (and, believe me, I've heard a few), R. John Hamilton.

I owe my career in music - the joy of my life - to my music directors in high school; my choir director and my band director. They saw a shy girl who never took band like all the rest of the band and choir kids, and didn't have the confidence to think of herself as a musician or a singer at all, just someone who picked around on the piano when she though no one else was watching, and they literally dragged me into choir and band. They wouldn't let anyone laugh at me because I didn't know how to read music as well as the rest of them; they encouraged me, challenged me, put me into situations that were above my level and made me rise to them. Because of their seeing something in me that I didn't see in myself, I learned how to play jazz; I learned how to sight-sing, and I ended up being one of the 20 best sight-singers in the state of Florida in All-State competition 3 years in a row, and got superiors in both piano and voice at State Contest. It wasn't because I was all that; it was because as teachers, both those directors cared enough to go out of their way to drag me into their programs.

A similar thing happened to my son. He has always been a fine tenor sax player, and he had a wonderful director in middle school. She was a no-nonsense martinet who scared the living daylights out of the kids who didn't really care about music, but she made sure that my son had every opportunity available to him to grow as a player - and made sure that he got into Hamilton Music Academy, where he played in the C jazz band there under the direction of new band director Jim Foschia. My son and Mr. Foschia bonded, and he stayed in that band for the next couple of years to get the leadership opportunities that Jim Foschia saw for him. He gave Sam room to lead and mentor younger students, even though his skills were good enough for the A band. His senior year, though, he moved up to the A band, and he was also recruited into the Vocal Jazz group, the elite singing group at the Academy, even though he had never sung a note in public - because John Hamilton saw something in him that he did not know was there. He did what my directors did for me - he didn't take 'no' for an answer, he challenged Sam, and in regional competition in Reno, Sam ended up winning solo awards for scat-singing. In Monterey, John Hamilton's group took first place and was invited to sing at the actual Monterey Jazz Festival. This was no accident. These are great teachers, who knew how to bring out the best in their students.

A great teacher, with a teacher's heart, is a national treasure and a gift to any student lucky enough to encounter them. They don't make more money than any other teacher; they don't get million-dollar bonuses and corporate jets - yet they contribute to society in a way that none of these lavishly-compensated corporate CEOs would or could ever do in a million years.

But after high school, when Sam had been offered scholarships by many fine schools, when he chose CSUN - he got budgeted out. Because even a couple of years ago, they started chipping away at education at the state level. So now Sam is going to community college to get his gen-eds, and working a day job as well, and hoping he can transfer to a state school.

And Sam was the lucky one.

His younger brother is in the ninth grade, in the same middle school. He is a talented percussionist and guitar player who was just chosen to be in the LA County Honors Symphonic Band, and who would have been going to Hamilton High School Music Academy next year. But it looks like he will probably not get to go there like his older brother did. LAUSD is eliminating its best magnet programs and pink-slipping those same talented and dedicated teachers from whom my older son received a priceless education - not just in music, but in dedication, discipline and excellence.

Sorry, James - no magnet for you. Those greedy public employees have just spent all that money on their pensions and big juicy paychecks, so it's time to 'trim the fat' - you know, education.

Hey, the world needs ditch-diggers, too.

There is a significant section of America that wants to get rid of public education altogether. It's an insidious chain - it starts with the multi-national corporations, Wall Street thieves and ultra-wealthy family fortunes (I'm looking at you, Koch Bros.) who have stolen the homes, jobs, pensions and health care (i.e. our lives) of the middle class and then taken that money off-shore and out of the system so as not to pay taxes on it, and instead of spending it and putting it back into the American economy, they hoard it and speculate with it instead.

Once they torpedoed the economy, they blackmail us - the victims of their thievery - into giving them our tax dollars to bail them out, which then - again - they hold onto instead of helping out those they stole from. Now that they've taken our jobs, our homes, our pensions and our health care, our tax revenue base has dwindled away to nothing. So - since we have no federal dollars left in the tax base, the money that would have otherwise gone to the states for education, etc. is no longer available.

SO - now they start howling about the states' fiscal irresponsibility, since they are mandated to balance their budgets, unlike the federal government. Now, the shortfall must be made up by cutting education and gutting public employees and their unions - and collective bargaining - all those things that they hate with a passion, trying to make THEM look like the bad guys and profligate spenders! They are trying to steal the pensions of the public employees - who PAID INTO their pension plan years in advance, having had it taken out of their paychecks in lieu of collecting Social Security.

And now, we get to the end-game - time to cut public education; 'starve the beast', as Grover Norquist would say. When you de-fund public education, and eliminate all its resources, it's the easiest thing in the world to say, "See - public education doesn't work! Look how bad the schools are!"

It's really almost beautiful in its symmetry. There is a sub-set of conservatives - many, but not all, evangelical - who are dead-set against public education, and education guaranteed for all. They are working to eliminate the Department of Education completely. They hate the idea that tax dollars are not supposed to fund religious education. They hate what they call 'government schools'. And they think that education should only go to those wealthy enough to afford it; let the rest of the riff-raff dig ditches. They really don't see education as necessary for all Americans - only those most deserving by way of their parents' wealth. They don't understand that an educated middle class workforce is what put us at the forefront of science and technology in the world. And a liberal arts education is archaic these days. Who in their right mind would waste four years on something that wasn't going to get them on the path to riches? And those lucky few who do manage to get a college education will be debt-slaves to their college loans for most of their lives.

This is the end result of what has been perpetrated on the domestic front for years - and what hasn't been stolen from us is going to fund wars and killing around the rest of the world. And in the Bush years, the money spent on war was not even included in the budget! Now that it is, all of a sudden it's the deficit that everyone's screaming about - funny that we never heard a peep about it from 2000 - 2008.

But, here's the REAL end-game. An educated middle class - with enough leisure to be able to concern itself with the luxury of a political opinion and the free time to gather and sort out the knowledge to make sense of what is going on - is the death-knell for the kleptocracy. An educated middle class stands up for itself, because it has the leisure - time and energy - to do so. A serf class - overworked to exhaustion, underpaid to the extent of its only concern being day-to-day survival - food and shelter - cannot find the wherewithal to challenge their overlords. When you work harder and harder for less and less, and your only choice for food and shelter is the 'company store' - perpetual indebtedness - the 'niceties' of art, philosophy, history, political involvement, are simply not available to you, either emotionally or physically.

It is breaking my heart. It was breaking my heart when my own children were not affected - everyone's child deserves nurturing and education and a fair chance, and yet we are under the thumb of people who would just dump them all into the wastebin so that they could have no limits on how much they could steal.

And when the crime rate skyrockets because young people have no education, no jobs, no hope, no self-esteem, no dignity, no futures - who do you think will be howling the loudest about 'law and order', 'three strikes' and making sure these kids will be locked up for as long as possible inside their 'for-profit' private prisons?

I think we all know the answer to that question - the same people who will never see the inside of a courtroom, much less a jail cell, for stealing an entire country can't wait to throw you in prison for the rest of your life for stealing a piece of pizza.

Of course, it's easy to talk about law and order - when you order the laws like a piece of pizza.

In the Midst of Re-Design and Updating Hooterville

2011-03-04T01:26:00.000-08:00

Well, it's time, I think, to give Hooterville a facelift. I have not been blogging steadily for quite a while. My family and I have been in survival mode, just trying to hang on, and so it has not been easy to find the time to do anything that is not immediately related to survival. However, I'm still trying to keep on writing - slowly, perhaps; but slow is better than not at all, and bringing Hooterville up to date seems to be a good way to keep moving forward.

Plus, I just discovered that my Blogrolling blogroll has vanished (as has the company itself), and with it all the blogs I have linked to since 2004! So maybe it's best to just start again and collect the blogs that are still relevant into a new blogroll, as well as change to the new Blogger format.

So, friends, please send me the links to your blogs so that I can add you again. As Skippy says, link to me and I'll link to you! It's probably a good idea to start fresh with blog links, because many if not most of my old ones are probably dead anyway.

I look forward to adding you back and spiffing up the place. Maybe I'll have a little blog party when it's done. You're invited!

Update: I'm adding blogs to the roll as I find them, so if yours isn't up yet, it's not because you've been left out. Holla back atcha girl! I'll get you on there ASAP.

Marcy's Running; I'm Singing!

2011-02-25T23:35:00.000-08:00

I wanted to let you all know that Marcy Winograd is stepping up to run for the California 36th CD seat.

She challenged Jane Harman for the seat twice, and made very impressive showings against the powerfully entrenched, incredibly wealthy and long-standing (and hawkish) Harman. Now Harman is leaving her seat, and although Marcy at first was reluctant to run, the absence of a real progressive, anti-war candidate and the urging of her many, many supporters convinced her to once again stand up for US - the working people, the people who want peace, who want jobs, who want a green economy, who want healthcare instead of warfare. As a high-school English teacher at Crenshaw High in LA, she is on the front lines of the attack against unions and public employees, and we are so fortunate she has agreed to stand up once again and speak up for us and for all Americans.

Marcy will be announcing her candidacy tomorrow in Torrance at 10am. I am so honored to be singing for her campaign kickoff once again, and I will do my best to try and broadcast at least audio and maybe even video if I get super-lucky. I'll update tomorrow, and if successful, I will be streaming right here on the blog.

When: Saturday, Feb. 26, 10 am
Where: In front of Fox Drug of Torrance (Old Town), 1327 El Prado, Torrance, 90501

Please join me in supporting Marcy. No matter where you live, a true progressive in Congress is desperately needed and can make a difference - maybe even the difference.

Marcy Winograd for Congress

Listen to the live audio stream (at 10am) by clicking on the Flash player below

This text will be replaced

If the Flash player does not work for you, click on this link, which should open up in iTunes, Winamp, or Windows Media Player (or whatever player you use for internet radio.)

If you have an iPhone or similar smartphone, you can listen via any Shoutcast internet radio player. Check out this post for details.

The Lost Continent of Atlantis Has Been Found - and it's the Answer to the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis!

2011-01-14T02:35:00.000-08:00

(I wrote this almost exactly three years ago - Feb 2008 - and it scares me how prescient it was!)

The Lost Continent of Atlantis Has Been Found - and it's the Answer to the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis!

DUBUQUE, Iowa -- In an astounding discovery, a scientist has announced the most amazing archaeological find of the twenty-first century - the Lost Continent of Atlantis!

Dr. Oliver Icklemyer, an archaeologist at the University of Phoenix, unveiled his astonishing news at a recent press conference in Dubuque, Iowa. First mentioned by Plato in Timaeus around 360 B.C., Atlantis was a magnificent continent-sized island empire which was destroyed in 9000 B.C. in the span of 24 hours by earthquakes and floods, and was subsequently lost in the bottom of the ocean, its advanced civilization lost forever - or so it has been believed. For centuries the location of the fabled Atlantis has been hotly debated, but Dr. Icklemyer has stunned experts by claiming that Atlantis is actually about half a mile out from the Jersey Shore.

"It stands to reason," the professor modestly explained. "When I connected the dots - 'Atlantic Ocean', 'Atlantic City', 'Atlantis' - it all fell into place."

And now, the Lost Continent of Atlantis has not only been discovered, but will soon be inhabited once again for the first time in eleven thousand years - by the victims of the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis!

The White House is hailing this as a 'win-win'. A spokesman for the Administration is quoted as saying, "This is a red-letter day for the Americans who have lost their homes due to fraudulent and deceptive marketing practices by banks and mortgage brokers. Each and every family that has been bilked out of their house will receive, practically free of charge, a beautiful 1/16-acre plot in the exclusive Atlantis: Phase II 'lifestyle community' subdivision - and an air tank for each member of the family! Every home is equipped with running water. There are recreational activities galore, including fishing and swimming."

Already real-estate developers are scrambling to get first dibs on this remarkable bonanza of untapped investment potential. An unnamed real-estate mogul calls it the real 'final frontier', saying, "Space, shmace! That's so last century! You wanna talk about your 'Manifest Destiny' - this is it, baby!" He plans on changing the name to 'Trump-lantis'.

In a statement to the Weekly World News, the President's mother Barbara Bush notes,"And so many of the people in Atlantis here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

I'm Even More Thankful For Two Sweet Words...

2011-01-10T16:11:00.000-08:00

Three years! (thanks, calibre97)

However, knowing Tommi, I will not begin to celebrate until I hear the 'click' of the key turning in the lock.

I'm Thankful For Four Sweet Words

2010-11-25T23:03:00.000-08:00

Convicted Felon Tom DeLay.

Bizarro Santa - a touching Right-Wing belief in Fairy Tales

2010-10-27T12:01:00.000-07:00

A commenter on the last post strikes a condescending and self-congratulatory note, and scolds me for "whining about the success others have achieved" while castigating those who bought homes they could not afford. Ah, yes - the 'Moral Hazard' argument, which applies only to the less-fortunate, but not at all to the too-big-to-fail banks and investment companies, who are now making more money than ever, courtesy of us, the American taxpayers - who, of course, get no such treatment from the recipients of our largesse, but, incredibly, refuse to help those who saved their bacon on the grounds that 'it would reward bad behavior!' Is that the "success" of which I'm supposed to be envious, and to which I am to aspire?

As usual, the Bizarro logic of conservatism rears its head, which leads me to the subject of this post. The most dearly-held beliefs of the conservative philosophy so often include belief in mythical creatures such as "The Invisible Hand of the Free Market", which they revere as if it were a scientific fact like gravity, or inscribed in red in the KJV Bible, instead of a misinterpreted and unsubstantiated economic theory, the implementation of which has brought us to our economic knees. Most of us, anyway. It's like they believe in a Bizarro Santa - one who does travel through a chimney and does have a bag of goodies, but instead of coming down the chimney and distributing the goodies, goes up the chimney with his bag crammed full of our stuff, and flies off to the North Pole with it.

My answer to lightnindan is as follows:

Wow - well done! You have managed to take every plutocratic talking point and tie them up together into a nice neat bow! You missed a couple, to be sure; don't forget about the Welfare Queens® and Lazy People Who Don't Want to Work but Want Other Hard-Working People to Support Them Instead™.

First of all, you start off with a fallacy that you take for a law of nature, like gravity: "You lower taxes to encourage people to engage in certain behavior."

Your smug and condescending attitude aside, this is not a fact. This is a theory. And, I may add, a theory that has not held up especially well. We HAD the 'lower taxes'. It's not like it hasn't been tried. Since 2000, this theory has had all the room it could use. And this is where we have ended up.

The word "taxes", BTW, is - in the context of which it has been used in our public discourse - merely a buzzword for 'taking money from me that I've earned and giving it to lazy people or the Gubmint'. What if your 'taxes' were eliminated, but you had to pay for roads, schools, infrastructure, public safety (police, firefighters), snail-mail (at what it actually costs to mail an object as opposed to what government subsidy of the post office allows us to pay), the legal and justice system (which affords you contract protection, among a host of other things) etc. - all the things that we take for granted that the government manages in our behalf?

You act like every penny you 'earn' came directly out of your ass, instead of the fact that it costs a LOT of money to put together a societal infrastructure where people can do business in the secure knowledge that there is a system of laws to protect you contractually, and a physical and communication infrastructure to support your ability to conduct business with other entities. Also, a public education system insures that you will have educated people to employ, and improve the country. Whether or not you have children has nothing to do with whether as a nation we should support public education and whether you as an individual should pay your fair share of it. Public education, and the GI Bill which allowed returning soldiers to go college, is what allowed us to be intellectual and scientific leaders in the world in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Now, we are falling sadly behind other nations who DO invest in their citizen's education.

But instead, your attitude is like that of a four-year-old who wants to sell lemonade on the sidewalk, so his mama spends money to make the lemonade, gives him a table and a chair to sit in, gives him the pitcher and the cups, and helps him draw a sign that says "Lemonade 5¢", and then proudly claims that "I did it all myself!" It is a childish, simplistic and ultimately unrealistic view of economics.

Also, nothing in what you wrote addressed anything I actually wrote about; you merely trotted out the same tired talking points and sad little 'I got mine' boasting and finger-pointing. Same with the 'Big Bad Government' stuff. Child, please.

Yes, there are individuals who overspent, and overbought, just like there are welfare queens and lazy freeloaders, but they are not anywhere near in the majority, nor are they the reason that the economy collapsed. They are the tokens that the banksters, nultinational corporations and Wall Street would like you to believe are the real problem - like a sleazy magician, misdirecting and pointing in any direction as long as it's away from themselves.

Let's break this down in real terms.

When the cost of living rises, and wages do not, what happens?

One has two choices - work more, and spend less.

This is what most of America has done since 1980.

But, eventually you get to where there are simply no more hours that one can work. And you get to where there are no more corners that you can cut, and the belt will not tighten any more.

Every year, we have been told through our wages that our work is worth less than it was the year before. Yet, productivity has increased - without wages following suit.

This is not conjecture; this is fact. Wages have been stagnant since 1980. And corporations and businesses WILL NOT raise wages unless they are compelled to. This, by the way, is not a criticism of corporations. Why should they? Their one and only directive is profit, and if they reduce their profit by paying more out in wages than they are compelled to, they are breaking their contract with their shareholders. They have to do what they were made expressly to do. They are legally and contractually bound to maximize their profit. This does not make them inherently bad; this is why they need to be regulated more firmly so as not to injure people.

This, by the way, is why they should not be considered legal people. Their aims, interests and needs are different than the aims, interests and needs of human beings.

So how are wages kept commensurate with prices? Through the pressure of collective bargaining. This is the only way to insure that there is enough power on the opposite side of the table to keep things equitable and balance. It is not to be expected that a corporation which depends on quarterly profits is going to voluntarily reduce those profits for something that will not directly and immediately benefit it. There has to be a standard held on what labor costs, because these are human beings who need to eat, breathe, and live, not inanimate objects.

But it is the people running these corporations, banks and investment firms who are profiting in the most grotesque way imaginable. As much as conservatives like to howl about 'redistributing wealth' - it's the most nefarious Communism if that redistribution goes from the top to the bottom (which it never does - the merest mention of the idea is enough to send them into a tizzy) they have no problem with 'redistributing' wealth from the bottom to the top, and that is what has happened.

So, go on and live in your self-congratulatory kindergarten fantasy world. It's too bad you can't see that the Santa you believe in is Bizarro Santa - going UP the chimney - with all your stuff in his bag.

Or, as the Big Red Man says - Ho. Ho. Ho.

In Plain Language - What the Hell Happened.

2010-10-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

Look, folks - it's really simple what happened here. And everything else is bullshit.

For the last 30 years, ever since Reagan came into office and busted the unions, wages have stayed the same or even declined, while prices have risen. This has resulted in every year as a whole workers have made less and less, but it's been so incremental, like the 'boiling frog', that we haven't noticed it, except to think that perhaps we weren't workng hard enough or were spending too much.

The 'investment class' on the other hand (those who don't get wages for working, but make money from investments and stock options - the 'top 1%' who makes money from money and not work), has had its income RISE over 400%.

BUT - since we are no longer a producing society (with most manufacturing jobs outsourced overseas - thanks, Chamber of Commerce!), but a consumer society, the ONLY way our economy stays afloat is for people to BUY things. Remember when Bush said "Go shopping!" after 9/11? This is the reason for the great credit push - they know we aren't paid enough in wages to buy a lot of stuff. So how to get Americans to keep the economy going without raising wages? Make them go into debt! So we get this unlimited credit (and all the costs included in that - the hidden fees, the late charges, the ability to change terms without notice). But that's STILL not enough.

So - enter the real estate/housing bubble, where homeowners are encouraged to buy what they need from the imaginary 'equity' in their homes. Since it doesn't really exist, it's more debt which will be handed down to our children and their children. And since we are NOT paid fair wages (wages that increase somewhat close to what the cost-of-living increase is) because the unions have been demolished, that's the only way we can stay afloat.

But, now even that is exhausted. We have come to the end of the line. The investment class has stolen every penny that we have. There's nothing left to steal from us, the working people. We finally had to stop spending, and that is when everything went down in flames.

Now, the top 10% whines that they pay 40% of all taxes, which they deem unfair. But what they don't say is that they control 90% of the wealth of the country! So, is it fair to pay 40% of the taxes on 90% of the wealth? Is it fair that we pay 30% for taxes on payroll (from WORK), but only 15% on investment income (money made from money)? And when the majority of the wealth of the country is held by investors, THEY DO NOT SPEND IT. It does NOT go back into the economy, it does not create jobs. It goes OFFSHORE to make more money for itself, and is not taxed.

When working people make more money, on the other hand, it DOES go back into the economy in the form of purchasing, which creates a market for things, which creates jobs to serve that market. Investment income does not help the economy. Working people buy things. Working people save money. Non-working people or people teetering on the edge of poverty do not spend, and they do not save.

Don't believe the hype, people. We are being stolen from, and until we see it for what it is, these suited thugs will continue to do so.

Sorry for the rant, but - when I hear this Republican piffle about Big Government and Tax Cuts, I just can't help but holler. If the investment class would pay its fair share, we woldn't be in the mess we're in. We've done it their way for 30 years, and we have become serfs. Guess what? The Trickle Down Theory just means we're being p***ed on.

Debt Serfdom

2010-10-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

I just read a very informative article by Charles Hugh Smith of Of Two Minds. So many of us like to imagine that we are middle-class (myself included) but when it comes down to meeting the definition of 'middle class', most of us fall short (again, myself included.) He says:

Imagining A Middle Class Does Not Create One (October 12, 2010)

Surveys show that Americans wildly underestimate the concentration of wealth in America. This disconnect between perception and reality shows the power of propaganda

Americans have been trained to believe that membership in the "middle class" is their birthright if they "work hard" in the status quo.

What income defines "middle class" is a function of locale and prevailing wages/costs ($100,000 in Manhattan or San Francisco isn't much because costs are so high), but in terms of purchasing power we can probably agree that middle class membership includes:

1. reliable private transport
2. a home with meaningful equity
3. healthcare insurance/coverage
4. a retirement fund of some sort
5. a college education/higher education or training

How many people "own" all of the above minimum standards has been drastically reduced by various factors.

Another measure of "middle class" is even simpler: a middle class household owns some wealth. It could be a retirement fund, a free-and-clear home, a business, income property or gold/cash/investments.
By that measure, the middle class comprises at best 20% of the populace.

Check out his charts to see how the numbers really add up.

The basic truth is that working folk have been gradually underpaid for thirty years, and now the chickens have come home to roost. Corporations have built their wealth on the backs of their employees by using money that should have gone to their workers for profits for themselves. And the end result is that there are no consumers left who can afford to consume - in a consumer (not a producer or manufacturing) society. The demise and disrespect of unions has kept the playing field vastly unequal, which is against the classic definition of a 'free market' (mythical though it may be.) In this classic definition, there is supposed to be a balance of powers to make it work, between the company, the employee/worker, and the consumer - much like the 'separation of powers' in the American system of government, designed to keep any one component from dominating the others.

This is not the case today, and the myth of the 'trickle-down' theory, which has been given a 30-year shot, has proven devastatingly wrong. Read Smith's article to see how things have really panned out due to 30 years of conservative economic theory.

What Would I Give To Hear A President Say These Words...

2010-09-01T02:23:00.000-07:00

My friend Batocchio of Vagabond Scholar is celebrating his 5-year blogiversary, and in stopping by to add my congrats, I read one of his fine posts, "We Cheat the Other Guy and Pass the Savings To You". In it, he links to one of the greatest speeches I have ever heard, one that breaks my heart every time I hear or read it. It is by the President who got us out of the Great Depression, and gave America a middle class that lasted for a large part of the 20th century - perhaps the greatest and most prosperous middle class we have ever known, or ever will know. In 1936, at Madison Square Garden, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave this speech to an America which was still struggling to climb out of the Depression, but was beginning to make progress. I quote a part of it below - the text of the speech in its entirety is here, as well as the audio of Roosevelt speaking it.

Tonight I call the roll - the roll of honor of those who stood with us in 1932 and still stand with us today.

Written on it are the names of millions who never had a chance‹men at starvation wages, women in sweatshops, children at looms.

Written on it are the names of those who despaired, young men and young women for whom opportunity had become a will-o'-the-wisp.

Written on it are the names of farmers whose acres yielded only bitterness, business men whose books were portents of disaster, home owners who were faced with eviction, frugal citizens whose savings were insecure.

Written there in large letters are the names of countless other Americans of all parties and all faiths, Americans who had eyes to see and hearts to understand, whose consciences were burdened because too many of their fellows were burdened, who looked on these things four years ago and said, "This can be changed. We will change it."

We still lead that army in 1936. They stood with us then because in 1932 they believed. They stand with us today because in 1936 they know. And with them stand millions of new recruits who have come to know.

Their hopes have become our record.

We have not come this far without a struggle and I assure you we cannot go further without a struggle.

For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace‹business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

What would I give to hear those words come from a President today?

My Father, 'Mac' McCracken

2010-08-15T18:32:00.000-07:00

(reposted from last year)

To look at his artwork, go here:

I lost my Dad, Willard Eastman McCracken, Jr., on Saturday, August 15. He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer at the end of 2005, the same kind of cancer that took Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, and generally progresses like wildfire - once it's big enough to be noticed, you usually have between 3-6 months to live. However, miraculously, he was treated successfully enough to have several years of remission - years in which my kids and husband and I were able to spend precious time with him, and time that I could share the most important ideals of my life - my progressive activism - with him, and he was able to see my book published and read my dedication to him. I'm so very grateful for that extra time that many people never get. My father was my inspiration and my biggest cheerleader, and he valued the qualities in me that I value in myself (and that not everyone else appreciates!) His expectations for me were not for money, status, or fame, but to follow my dreams and be true to them and to myself, and I'm so glad I was able to make him proud of me.

What follows is what I have written for his memorial - if you're interested, click on 'read the rest' (and, yes - that is who you think it is in the second photo!)

-----------------------------------------------------

Willard Eastman “Mac” McCracken, Jr.

Willard Eastman “Mac” McCracken, Jr. was a true Renaissance man in an age of compartmentalization and specialization. A painter, inventor, philosopher, humanitarian, writer, humorist, curator, actor, mathematician, raconteur and educator, he entered this world with an enthusiasm for art, for learning, for teaching and for people that stayed with him his entire life and inspired everyone who came across his path.

Born on October 24, 1929 in Stafford, Connecticut to Willard, Sr. and Florence McCracken, he grew up in the small town of Charlton, Massachusetts, in an area where freedom-loving Scots-Irish McCrackens had lived for a century and a half. His great-grandfather George Washington McCracken's wife Mary Edgerly Thornton was the great-great-granddaughter of William Thornton, brother of Matthew Thornton, the last signer of the Declaration of Independence. His father owned a garage in Charlton and was a town selectman, while his mother owned a motel, and the rugged New England determination and independent spirit of his forebears played no small part in the formation of Mac’s indomitable personality.

Mac graduated from high school at sixteen, and was admitted to the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where he earned his B.S. in Art and Education. He received his M.A. in Art and Education from Columbia University, Teachers College, after which he joined the Army, where he was a radio operator in Alaska - the one place in the United States that could conceivably be colder than Massachusetts. While stationed in Alaska, Mac submitted an entry in a competition to design a monument to honor the patron of Eielson AFB, and his entry was selected as the winning design, along with that of a USAF lieutenant, to be used for the monument.

After teaching at SUNY Buffalo, he moved with his family to Tampa, FL and the University of South Florida, where he helped transition the department of Fine Arts from the umbrella of the College of Liberal Arts to its own college and develop the first charter and organization of the college. He was an associate professor of Arts and Education, and became the assistant dean of the College of Fine Arts. Later on he was an associate with the critically-acclaimed Graphicstudio, and helped organize Graphicstudio archives at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He participated in Robert Rauschenberg’s Overseas Culture Interchange, traveling to Russia with Rauschenberg, and worked extensively with him over the years. He was an authority on Cézanne, and dove deep into the meaning of the artist’s work and what he was trying to accomplish. Mac’s own paintings were filled with vibrancy and strength, surprise, passion and often humor. A McCracken painting was one that stayed in your mind’s eye and resonated in your soul long after you walked away from it. But his true mission and passion was art education – finding a way to bring an understanding and appreciation of the transformative qualities of art to all people, and helping them find the art in their own lives.

Mac’s art and scholarship, prodigious as it was, was merely part of an expression of who he was as a human being. He was a man who loved people, and people loved him. He was comfortable in all walks of life, and found something in common with every person he met. He had a big, open heart and a rich, deep vein of humor that delighted and charmed those around him. He loved children and understood them in a way that drew kids of all ages to him like a magnet. He dressed up in ridiculous costumes, sang silly self-penned songs, and generally set everyone to laughing – himself as much as anyone else. He was a joyous and loving father to his own children, a beloved Baha to his grandchildren, and any child he encountered became his own – he always had room in his heart for a child. In later life, with his white beard and rotund waistline, he delighted in playing Santa Claus, and he had the jovial personality to go along with the appearance.

One of his great inspirations and influences was Albert Einstein, and, like his hero Einstein, Mac was a humanitarian as well as an intellectual – indeed, the one was the expression of the other. His brilliant mind was only matched by his tremendous heart. Mathematics was one of his hobbies, and he spent fifty-five years looking for a solution to the Four-Color problem, which, to his great delight, he finally discovered in his last years.

Mac was a rabid sports enthusiast, but especially a golf fanatic, and near the end of his life was able to fulfill his dream of going to the Master’s in Augusta – and was cheering in the stands along with his daughter Leigh, his son-in-law Jay, and his granddaughter Jena when the Florida Gators won the NCAA basketball championship on the same day, and the four of them also experienced the thrill of being at Game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs when the Tampa Bay Lightning prevailed. Another life goal was reached when the Red Sox finally won the World Series in 2004. (His mother Florence had the distinction of being alive for both Red Sox World Series victories!) In 1994 he and his son Willard III made a journey to Massachusetts to go to a Red Sox game together at Fenway Park – yet another long-held ambition realized. When they went to Charlton to visit old haunts, they stopped by his former school, which was shaded by a huge old oak tree. “I remember planting that tree on Arbor Day,” Mac remarked. He dove head-first into every kind of creative endeavor. He was a prolific writer; he was an actor in many USF plays; he played a mean blues guitar and was a jazz aficionado, having spent much of the ‘50s in New York City, where he hung out with the great jazz musicians of the day, as well as the Beat writers and artists who, with him, were pushing the boundaries and exploring and expanding the definition of art, music and literature in our culture.

Family was the center of Mac’s life, and laughter and love was the woof and warp that held us all together. He was immensely proud of all his children and grandchildren, and they all adored their Baha in return. He took care of his parents in their last years, putting all else aside. When he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2005, not long after his mother passed, the family were prepared for the worst, as this particular kind of cancer is often terminal by the time it is discovered. Thanks to his flinty Yankee stubbornness, his brilliant oncology team and his wonderful physician and friend Dr. Jai Cho, with a combination of radiation, chemotherapy and some surgical procedures he was able to be treated and have several years of remission. The treatments were grueling, and he was often in great pain and unable to eat, yet he never complained, instead insisting on living life the way he always had. The silver lining inside the dark cloud of cancer is that the family were given extra, precious time to spend with Mac, especially his grandchildren in California, who developed a strong bond with their grandfather who had been three thousand miles away. They will always remember the card games, the pool games, the pancakes and chocolate-chip waffles that their Baha made for them, the goofy photos - Baha, down on his knees, with a pair of shoes in front of them, and a top hat and cane, calling himself ‘Toulouse-Lautrec’ - and the stack of jazz CDs that he gave his saxophone-playing grandson Sam – CDs of the many jazz artists he knew as friends in New York. These last few years, though heartbreakingly difficult, enabled his family to come together to share with him how much they loved him, and to revel in the warmth and love and humor that was so much a part of him. He also lived to give away his youngest daughter Breeze at her wedding last year, and his newest grandson Kingston James came home two days before Mac’s passing. He joined his son Will at church, and attended Mass every day for the last six months of his life, which afforded him much peace and solace.

Mac McCracken was truly one-of-a-kind – brilliantly unique, incredibly gifted, unusual and wonderful. Anyone who met him never forgot him, and anyone who knew him loved him. His lifelong friend, mentor and colleague, artist Dr. Don Saff, described him as the ‘philosopher-in-residence’ of the USF Fine Arts department – a ‘cerebral humanitarian’. A visionary, a perpetual scholar besotted with learning, yet earthy and real, to Mac art and life were interwoven – indeed, intrinsically inseparable. He demonstrated that art is not only for the elite and sophisticated, but is the expression of the very core of who we are as humans, and is as necessary as air to human existence. Mac was a soulful man, in every meaning of the word. He thought big, lived big, loved big. He dreamed impossible dreams, and believed wholeheartedly in the power of possibilities. Failure may have come to him at times, as it must to all of us, but never a failure of heart or soul. Without our artists, our dreamers, our idealists, those who risk everything to dare to look beyond and tell us what they see there, life would be bleak indeed – even pointless. He reached for his dreams with the bright-eyed optimism of a child, and if he failed to reach them, they were no less real and valuable. Mac McCracken possessed the magical power of being able to show us those possibilities, to weave those dreams that bring beauty and light and joy to life, and to inspire us to reach for them, too.

Alicia McCracken Morgan
August 20, 2009

Bowed but Unbroken

2010-08-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Las Vegas and the Netroots Nation conference. It was amazing, inspiring; I met so many old and new friends, and so many fierce progressive activists - even some Congress members! I was able to meet (and give my book to) wonderful folks like Laura Flanders, Amanda Marcotte, Lizz Winstead, Alan Grayson, Amy Goodman, Pam Spaulding, Elizabeth Warren, D. Aristophanes (from Sadly, No!), Markos and Digby - even if they dropped it into the trashcan at the first chance they got, I was able to put it into their hands. It was the opportunity of a lifetime to connect with other progressives and get busy doing what needs to be done.

Back to life; back to reality.

I am still finding it an uphill battle just to get up every day and do the minimum that has to be done to keep my world and family functioning. Today I got an email from my blog friend ddjango at P! and his post really touched me. He writes:

From the heart ...

Three times in the past I have abandoned the blogoswamp because I was too sick to write. I have nearly done it again. I can't really blame "illness" again, although I have been fighting my seemingly intractable clinical depression again over the last six months. But it's been more than that. I have been constitutionally incapable of continuing to catalog in these pages our descent into hell.

That spoke right to me. I wrote him back:

I am in the same boat as you are, my friend. I am fighting depression that is not only chemical but situational. I am a chronic depressive and have been able to manage it quite well with medication, as (oddly) I am by nature a happy, optimistic person. But this last year has kicked my ass. The banksters are playing cat and mouse with our house - they want to take it from us badly and they are using trick after trick to try and trip us up so they can swoop in and take it. We are in the process of trying to get a loan mod and they put a sale date on it every month because of something bogus like 'losing' our paperwork four or five times; the last one, last week, claimed that we didn't sign our 50-page document correctly. We did; I have the proof; we know it and they know it. But their tactic is just to keep fucking with us until we slip up. Plus, my new department head is trying to kick me to the curb at work, cutting my hours to almost nothing.

This has resulted in my inability to write with any kind of consistency, or do anything proactive at all; I can't focus, I can hardly move. What I want more than anything is to be writing about what's going on, but it's not possible in my state. At a time when it's nore important than ever to act, it's all I can do to get through the basics of my day. I spend the whole day telling myself "Get up; get moving; don't go back to sleep."

But I believe in my bones that though we have been let down so badly, that means that we have to keep fighting. Even more. And hope is a luxury we really can't afford. Sure, I would love to have hope, but every important social change - civil rights, women's rights, labor rights - has come about in the face of no hope. And if we believe that something is right, we have no option but to press on.

I am hoping I can find a way to keep moving forward. I really, really feel you, ddjango. This hurts. It sucks. But I'm going to keep trying every single day to try to move forward. I am not saying I will succeed. But I will try. I'm sending you my best thoughts and care.

I wouldn't have even been able to write this without feeling the need to connect with ddjango, because I know just how he feels. And the mental and emotional wherewithal to write is almost more than I can dredge up.

When I spoke very briefly to Elizabeth Warren after her panel on mortgages and foreclosures, I told her about our situation and who our bankers were. I told her that OneWest was desperately trying to take the house that we have owned since 1983, because they had bought out IndyMac and had therefore bought our mortgage for pennies on the dollar, and had no interest in letting us keep our house. When I mentioned IndyMac and OneWest, her eyes opened wide and she shook her head. "Then you know exactly what I've been talking about," she said.

Do I ever.

But with all this, I just have to say, "I'm not quitting today." 24 hours at a time is all I can manage. And if I can stay connected somehow, I may be able to get mad enough to keep fighting. I may not fight today. But I won't quit, and that has to be good enough for today.

It beats the alternative.

Pinch Me.

2010-07-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

Is this really me, signing my book - right next to Amy Goodman?

This trip has exceeded any expectations I could have possibly had.

I have met so many incredible people - activists, bloggers, progressives of all kinds - both high-profile and regular-profile (like me!) I feel like I'm dreaming.

Ahem.

2010-07-24T00:30:00.000-07:00

Need I say more?

And - I gave him my book!

Netroots Nation, Las Vegas - Day 2

2010-07-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

Right now: listening to the inspirational Van Jones. Last night: heard Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer.

I've been enjoying hanging out with great online friends who I have known for a long time through blogging and Second Life, and finally met in person. It is an amazing feeling to tap into the real progressive energy and passion that is here at Netroots.

Plus, they are going to let me sell my book at the bookstore booth here!

Van Jones: "If wind power goes wrong, we won't have a 'wind slick'"

Van Jones: "When it gets harder to love...love harder."

Netroots Nation!

2010-07-22T08:34:00.001-07:00

I'm heading to Vegas for Netroots Nation! Looking forward to meeting progressive friends in person. Maybe I'll see you there!

MarcyWatch 2010 - Winograd for Congress June 8 - A Candidate of Conscience

2010-06-01T11:02:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, I was honored and thrilled that Marcy invited me to sing a song at the concert that her campaign held for her volunteers, the People's Concert for Winograd. Honestly, the celebrity level of the performers was way above mine - the lineup included Vonda Shepard, Chris Schifflet, the unbelievably amazing Lili Haydn, and others who are way more high-profile than I am, but Marcy was generous enough to include me. I sang the song that I sang at the launch of her campaign, Sam Cooke's "Change Gonna Come", because that is what I fervently hope, pray and work for; and getting Marcy Winograd into Congress will be a strong move in that direction.

The concert was incredibly inspiring, uplifting, and upbeat, but before it was over, Marcy interrupted the festivities to tell us about the Israeli military attack on the ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, and to immediately denounce the attack.

Love her or hate her, Marcy Winograd is a candidate of conscience.

From Marcy's press release:

"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. Enough, we must stop this, and adhere to the laws that have been established by the international community. Working for peace and human rights for all is the only way forward. As a Jewish woman of conscience, I invite my opponent, Jane Harman, another Jewish woman, and all of Congress to join me in denouncing this kind of barbaric violence, demanding an end to the blockade, and seeking an international investigation into these murders. I recommit myself to working towards a true, just, and lasting peace."

Those of you who read me may notice I don't write much about the Israel/Palestine conflict. I try to write about matters on which I have some authority to speak, and while I certainly have my views on the subject, I do not feel qualified to pontificate on them. I have Jews in my family who have lost uncounted relatives to the Holocaust, and I have close Jewish friends, some of whom see Marcy's views as a betrayal of the Jewish people. As Marcy herself states, she has been vilified by many in the Jewish community for these views, and taken a lot of political heat for them. And, in a congressional race where she faces a wealthy, long-time Democratic incumbent, it could possibly mean the difference between winning and losing that race.

Marcy is a peace activist, first and foremost. She is a founder of L.A. Jews for Peace, and she believes down to her very bones that all people are entitled to live in peace - including Palestinians. This view does not always endear her to what, as a Jewish woman, would be considered her 'base'. It is not a politically convenient view to hold or support. But Marcy Winograd is a woman of principle, and these core principles are not negotiable, nor are they for sale or barter.

And in this morass of bought-and-paid-for politicians which is our current Congress, a candidate of convictions, a candidate of conscience, is a candidate who we desperately need in office. We have too many Democratic members of Congress who 'talk left, and move right', if they talk left at all. We need a Congressperson who can make some dents in the armor of corporate-cash-controlled policy. We need someone to represent for the people, not the profit margin. We need someone who knows that if you truly believe in freedom, you cannot ask for freedom for yourself and deny it to others.

We need Marcy Winograd, a candidate of conscience, in Congress.

To learn more about the Winograd For Congress campaign, visit Winograd for Congress website: http://www.winograd4congress.com/ - or - Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WinogradForCongress

This week is crucial! You can support Marcy by donations, phone-banking, precinct-walking, or - just tell a friend. Pass the word along.

Vote for Marcy this coming Tuesday, June 8

Memorial Day

2010-05-31T11:06:00.000-07:00

Remembering and honoring the men and women who have given their lives in service to their country.

MarcyWatch 2010 - Winograd for Congress June 8 - Why I Support Marcy Winograd, and Why You Should, Too - Even If You Don't Live In California

2010-05-26T11:30:00.000-07:00

Today is the day of Marcy Winograd's fundraising goal - the campaign is aiming for $50,000 towards a final media effort to get Marcy on TV, radio and the Internet in these closing weeks before the election.

We have less than two weeks until June 8.

I contributed today to Marcy's campaign, even though we are squeezed financially. Some things are worth biting the bullet for, and right now I can't think of a cause that's more important than getting a true progressive leader - Marcy - into Congress.

Right now, our country is being hobbled by Democrats who are not acting like Democrats. We cannot begin to slow down, much less repair, the damage that has been done to America by eight years of George W. Bush and the complete implementation of conservative and neoconservative political and social values unless we change course. The election of Barack Obama, while definitely preferable to a McCain presidency (and the possibility of a tragic snowmobiling accident), has not been the waving of a magic wand.

What we have seen so far with a Democratic majority and a Democratic president has been Republican-lite - corporatist Democrats who are bought and paid for by the same interests that own Republicans, and are afraid (or not permitted) to put forth any ideas that might meet with disfavor from the very industries that have brought America to its knees - the banking industry, the credit-card industry, the oil industry, the coal industry, the defense industry, the health industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry. These Democrats are afraid to take a stand with Democratic values, and instead are seeking to appease those industries, hoping for their approval so they won't have to fight.

Sorry, Dems - that's not going to happen.

I understand the rationale to a certain extent, even though I don't condone it. It's like this: the reality of politics is that getting into office and staying in office, as our system is set up now, depends upon corporate money and corporate influence. Even well-intentioned Democrats find that it's not so easy to stick to your guns when you're asked to look at an issue from the perspective of the businesses and industries who offer the huge amounts of money necessary not only to get elected, but to stay in your office. And not only that, if you choose not to support the corporate view, but the view of those who can't afford that sort of largess - regular American people - not only will you not receive the money for your campaign chest - but these corporations will look for and support your opponent! It becomes easier, you say to yourself, to go along with those who control the purse-strings and try to do what you can within those parameters - after all, your opponent might not be as progressive as you are. If you brand yourself as hard to do business with, you won't be chosen for any important committees, and left out of the sphere of influence.

And, with the revolving door between political office and corporate lobbying, you will be cutting yourself out of any chance at money and influence when you leave office if you don't have good relationships with these corporations. This is more than just running for office; this is a lifetime lucrative career in Washington - in and out of office. Your connections as a Congressperson are coin of the realm on K Street.

This is the harsh reality of politics and government. And until we can fundamentally change the process of running for office and running for re-election, this is how most politicians end up doing business - Democrats and Republicans alike.

There are only a handful (with fingers left over) of Congresspeople who have the independence and the courage to stick to their progressive values in the face of this kind of pressure - Dennis Kucinich, Al Franken, Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, Donna Edwards, Barbara Lee (and my namesake sister, Georgia State Representative Alisha Morgan, an up-and-coming young progressive leader - watch for her!). Love them or loathe them (and I love them - but, then, I'm a liberal), they stand up for their values regardless of convenience and so-called 'bi-partisanship'. It is time to add one more name to that list:

Marcy Winograd.

I first became aware of Marcy when she challenged Jane Harman in the last 3 months of the 2006 Congressional race. A complete unknown, a high-school teacher and peace activist, she garnered close to 40% of the vote against the extremely wealthy and entrenched long-time incumbent, the hawkish Jane Harman, who has called herself the 'best Republican in the Democratic Party.' As I had begun blogging in 2004, I found myself needing to become active on a local level as well as on the Internet, and I started by joining Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, of which Marcy was the co-founder and president at the time. I phone-banked for Marcy, and the more I found out about her, the more certain that I was that here was a real progressive worth getting excited about. Marcy's mother Teddi Winograd was a longtime progressive activist, and Marcy proudly followed in her footsteps and forged her own path in public service - real public service, not government glad-handing. Teaching, caring for the environment, supporting labor, working for peaceful solutions to conflict - this has been Marcy's way her entire life. From a young age she was active in progressive causes, and has always 'walked the talk' - not with an eye on public office, but a dedication to making working people's lives better, working for peace, social justice and a healthy planet - all of those 'old-school' liberal values that seem to have fallen out of fashion in the national discourse and derided as 'socialism' even by those who are most damaged by their absence.

But Marcy is so much more than progressive ideas - Marcy is a fighter. Her life demonstrates that her values are not for sale to the highest bidder; she is not looking to enrich herself, but to fight for what she knows to be right. Marcy knows that we need jobs, not wars; healthcare, not wealthcare. She knows that we must rebuild our nation from the bottom up - the poor, the working class, the middle class - not shower money on those at the top and hope that it will trickle down. We have seen what happens when we do that - they take care of themselves and give the rest of America the middle finger. And if you don't believe that, try getting a loan modification.

As I have gotten to know Marcy over the last four years, I am more and more impressed with her integrity, her determination, her willingness to take a politically uncomfortable or unpopular position and stand up for it. I am also impressed with her compassion, her ability as a community leader to work with people in all walks of life to get things accomplished, and her formidable leadership skills. She fights hard for the things I care about. Her honesty, integrity, and passion for justice make her a force to be reckoned with - a force that we so desperately need in the Democratic Party, and in Congress.

You do not have to live in California or Los Angeles to support Marcy! As a Democratic member of Congress, Marcy will be able to be a progressive voice for all Americans - and she is one of the very few people that I know I can count on to be who she says she is, to fight for us - for jobs, for the environment, for health, for peace, for justice - even in the face of the pressure of the go-along-to-get-along Washington status quo.

Wherever you are, if you are a progressive (or even if you aren't - you'll benefit too!) please consider supporting Marcy Winograd for Congress with a contribution to her campaign. Or, you can volunteer - you can phone-bank from your cell phone; if you're local, you can canvass the district - contact the campaign for more information. There are so many ways you can give Marcy support! Marcy does not take corporate contributions, so we need your help to get the word out to the people of California's District 36!

This is the time to take out Blue Dogs, and replace them with real Democrats - a fighting Dem like Marcy Winograd.

I was honored to be asked by Marcy to sing at her campaign kickoff, and I can't wait to see this campaign culminate in victory - not just for Marcy, but, more importantly, a victory for America.

Marcy's Website

About Marcy

Marcy's Stand on the Issues

Meet Marcy; Volunteer!

Donate to Marcy's Campaign at ActBlue

Marcy on Facebook

MarcyWatch 2010 - Winograd for Congress June 8 - Help Us Get to $50,000 by Tomorrow

2010-05-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Marcy is on the home stretch!

We have two weeks left before the election; two weeks to defeat Jane Harman in California's 36th congressional district.

In these final days before the June 8th election, my campaign must make key decisions, which you can put into action. We're making one final push to have the best fundraising month yet and we're so close.

Please help us raise $50,000 by donating to my campaign before midnight tomorrow, May 26th. It's time to get rid of Blue Dog Jane Harman!

Jane Harman has had her chance, and in the past 15 years hasn't had much to show for it. Being best buds with Wall Street, Big Pharma, and weapons manufacturers may help with someone's re-election, but it doesn't do much for the American people.

I have kept my promise to run a people-powered campaign and have refused to accept one cent from corporations. It's time to inform the rest of our great district about what is really at stake in this election. It's time for me to get on TV, radio, and all over the internet to get the word out!

Help me spread my message to the people of District 36 by contributing by tomorrow. With your help, we will end Harman's reign and elect the People's candidate - Marcy Winograd - to join the ranks of Sestak and Halter.

June 8th is just around the corner and we have plenty left to do. With a little effort and your support, we can do this.

Onward to victory!

Marcy Winograd

MarcyWatch 2010 - Winograd for Congress June 8 - Marcy Challenges Harman on War Vote Profit

2010-05-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

Marcy Winograd Press Release:

May 24, 2010

Congressional Candidate Demands Opponent Divest War Portfolio & Return Campaign Contributions

(Marina del Rey) Before Congress votes on another $33 billion supplemental war appropriation, Congressional Candidate Marcy Winograd (CA-36) challenges her opponent Jane Harman to immediately divest of up to $8.3 million worth of investments in military contracting firms and return over $60,000 in campaign contributions from military contractors.

Says Winograd regarding Harman's investments, "Clearly, Harman's votes to take us to war in Iraq and escalate in Afghanistan are making her richer by the hour. No wonder she voted for the Iraq invasion, despite pleas from constituents not to attack Iraq. With a portfolio heavily invested in weapons production, Harman should have recused herself from each war supplemental vote or divested her stock in military contractors."

According to Harman's 2008 financial disclosure statement filed with the House of Representatives, Harman has the following investments in weapons manufacturers: Boeing $130,000 to $350,000, Lockheed Martin $80,000 to $200,000, Caterpillar Inc. $195,000 to $500,000, and General Dynamics $80,000 to $200,000. (Click here for full list.)

Winograd notes Harman not only invests in military contractors but also relies on them, sometimes the exact same companies, for campaign contributions. According to her filing with the Federal Election Commission, Harman has received the following 2009/2010 campaign contributions from military contractors: Boeing ($10,000 maximum), Raytheon ($10,000 maximum), Northrop Grumman ($10,000 maximum), Honeywell International ($7,500), General Dynamics ($4,500), and Lockheed Martin ($2,000).

Says Winograd, "If we follow the money from Harman to war contractors and back again we see a symbiotic you-scratch-my-back and I'll-scratch-yours relationship. Unfortunately this political pandering comes at a great price to our veterans, our district, and our nation. Our district deserves a lawmaker who will not send our youth to war simply to benefit her own financial portfolio or guarantee her campaign coffers are filled for the next election."

Adds Winograd,"In Congress I will work hard to expand the reach of aerospace into the new green economy, so that our engineering talent and skilled work force can build mass transit, develop solar and wind power, and fix our aging bridges and water treatment plants. We need to bring manufacturing back to the United States and the 36th congressional district could be the anchor for the new economy."

To learn more about the Winograd For Congress campaign, visit Winograd for Congress website: http://www.winograd4congress.com/ - or - Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WinogradForCongress

Contact: Caitlin Frazier, Press Secretary
Caitlin@WinogradForCongres
s.com
Tel. (405) 818 4077

###

MarcyWatch 2010 - Winograd for Congress June 8 - Weekend Edition

2010-05-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

All work and no play?

Not here, folks!

To thank all of Marcy's awesome volunteers, her campaign is throwing a big bash -

Free Concert and Rally for Volunteers, May 30!

We are all limited to a single vote on election day, but there is no limit to your voice in a democracy, and your efforts will win this election. Our polling indicates we're within four percentage points of Jane Harman. Help us close the gap!

We’re mounting our biggest event yet, to rally our volunteers prior to Get Out The Vote week and thank you in advance for your help with the final efforts of the campaign.

The Winograd for Congress Campaign will be throwing a party at Venice hot spot The Stronghold in the heart of the Abbot Kinney area on May 30 —and the Winograd for Congress campaign volunteers will be the guests of honor - our VIP's! Come hear Vonda Shepard, Chris Shiflett (of the Foo Fighters), Matt Keating, Lili Haydn, Wendy Starland, Tom Freund—and of course our own Marcy Winograd, Congressional Candidate for CA-36 in the June 8th Primary - plus other very special guests.

This is Marcy's way of saying "thank you" to all of her fantastic grassroots volunteers whom have made her Congressional Campaign in the CA-36 June 8th primary race a smashing success.

Tickets are free for the Winograd for Congress Volunteers. All we ask is that you::
Show up at the campaign headquarters (11:00am to 9:00pm; see address below) before May 30 and put in at least a two-hour shift phone banking or precinct walking;
Commit to just one more shift on GOTV week or Election Day.

Tickets can only be obtained at the HQ, and there are only 125 available. It's first come first served--so hurry!

May 30th, 8:00pm – 11:00pm
THE CONCERT FOR WINOGRAD
The Stronghold: 1625 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice 90291

Donate to Marcy's campaign at ActBlue~

MarcyWatch 2010 - Winograd for Congress June 8 - Weekend Edition

2010-05-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

What's up with Marcy this weekend?

Would you like to meet her for yourself and find out?

You can meet her in Torrance if you hustle :-) at 11am at the Torrance Farmers Market

11:00 am at the Winograd Table
2400 Jefferson Street
Torrance, CA

or...

Marcy Winograd and Bill Rosendahl at Bikeside Speaks!

Marcy and Bill Rosendahl will cap off a full night of talks at Bikeside Speaks.
7:00 pm
Bikerowave, 12255 Venice Blvd., Venice
http://www.bikesidela.org/marcy-winograd-bill-rosendahl-at-bikeside-speaks/

Contribute to Marcy's campaign at ActBlue!

MarcyWatch 2010 - Winograd for Congress June 8 - Who Let the (Blue) Dogs Out?

2010-05-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

Progressives, that's who!

Joe Sestak just routed Arlen Specter, and Blanche Lincoln is on the run.

It's time to get rid of the Wall Street enablers and war supporters on the Democratic side of the aisle.

As the Republican Party is heading over the right-wing-crazy cliff, held hostage by the increasingly radical liber-terribles and teabaggers, where even a moderate Republican is considered anathema to the cause, we must define who we are as a party and represent.

And we must elect progressives - there is no other way to stop this free-fall. Conserva-Dems and Blue Dogs are moving to the right - we need to claim our position, as the Republicans have.

Otherwise, we will continue down the same disastrous path we've been on - and it's only getting worse.

Help Marcy Winograd win on June 8! Marcy is a people-powered Democrat, representing the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, and needs your help to face the corporate-funded, corporate-friendly Jane Harman, one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

Marcy has what it takes to stay focused, principled and progressive in the lobby-licious environment of Congress. If you want a Congressperson who will stand up for working people and not Wall Street, who will not cave in to big money, you want Marcy Winograd in Congress.

Marcy's principles are not for sale to the highest bidder.

Winograd For Congress - June 8

MarcyWatch 2010 - Winograd for Congress June 8 - Foreclosures Break Records!

2010-05-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

Marcy Winograd for Congress Countdown - Vote on Tuesday, June 8!

Donate to Marcy via ActBlue here!

One huge reason to kick Jane Harman to the curb is that she signed the vile, loathsome Bankruptcy Bill of 2005, the disgusting bill that closed off a last attempt to protect ourselves from the rapaciousness of the credit card companies - an industry-written bill that the credit card industry had been attempting to purchase from Congress for the previous 20 years. One of the components of the bill rescinded the ability of bankruptcy judges to order banks to modify home loans. And, as we have found, if asked instead of ordered, banks will refuse to do so.

Here's Marcy's take on the foreclosure crisis:

In light of record foreclosures, more than 7,000 in our district last year, Marcy supports a "First Right to Rent" rule for homeowners losing their homes. "If banks were required to rent to those facing foreclosure, we would have far fewer foreclosures," says Marcy, "because banks find it harder to sell a home with tenants in the house."

Foreclosures not only impact those losing their homes, but also neighborhoods that suffer vandalism and lower property values, as well as counties that lose their tax base, thus forcing cuts in social services that hurt the newly homeless. Marcy's opponent, Jane Harman, voted for the 2005 bankruptcy bill which makes it easier for banks to foreclose by prohibiting bankruptcy judges from ordering banks to modify home loans.

For more on the foreclosure crisis, read the Associated Press report below:

Mortgage Delinquencies, Foreclosures Break Records
by Alan Zibel

WASHINGTON - The number of homeowners who missed at least one mortgage payment surged to a record in the first quarter of the year, a sign that the foreclosure crisis is far from over.

More than 10 percent of homeowners had missed at least one mortgage payment in the January-March period, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday. That number was up from 9.5 percent in the fourth quarter of last year and 9.1 percent a year earlier.

Those figures are adjusted for seasonal factors. For example, heating bills and holiday expenses tend to push up mortgage delinquencies near the end of the year. Many of those borrowers become current on their loans again by spring.

Without adjusting for seasonal factors, the delinquency numbers dropped, as they normally do from the winter to spring.

More than 4.6 percent of homeowners were in foreclosure, also a record. But that number, which is not adjusted for seasonal factors, was up only slightly from the end of last year.

Stocks slid Wednesday as investors looked past a rising euro and focused on the U.S. economy, including the rising number of foreclosures. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 100 points in early trading.

Jay Brinkmann, the trade group's chief economist, said the foreclosure crisis appears to have stabilized. Seasonal adjustments may be exaggerating the change from the previous quarter, he added.

"I don't see signs now that it's getting worse, but it's going to take a while," he said. "A bad situation that's not getting worse is still bad."

Economic woes, such as unemployment or reduced income, are the main catalysts for foreclosures this year. Initially, lax lending standards were the culprit. But homeowners with good credit who took out conventional, fixed-rate loans are now the fastest growing group of foreclosures.

Those borrowers made up nearly 37 percent of new foreclosures in the first quarter of the year, up from 29 percent a year earlier.

The risky subprime adjustable-rate loans that kicked off the foreclosure crisis are making up a smaller share of new foreclosures. They made up 14 percent of new foreclosures in the January-March period, down from 27 percent a year earlier.

MarcyWatch 2010 - Winograd For Congress June 8 - Interview Today at 3pm PST

2010-05-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

It's the countdown to the election we've been working towards for the last four years. I will be posting daily updates on Marcy Winograd's Congressional race for CA-36.

The election is June 8!

Marcy is a true progressive, and we have never needed progressives in Congress like we do now. The results of conservative policies - predatory, unregulated crony capitalism - are visible each and every day; and with each new disaster - the BP oil leak, the spate of fatal mining accidents, the foreclosure crisis - we see how imperative it is that we find a way to stem the tide of corporate greed which is superseding the interests of the American people and our right to protect ourselves, our families, our jobs, our health, our environment. When corporations are allowed to call the shots, and their interests run counter to the public interest, people die. "We can regulate ourselves! We know our own industry best, after all!"

Really, BP? Really, Massey Energy? Really, Wall Street?

A Democratic President, obviously, isn't enough. And if there is to be any kind of pushback on behalf of the American people, it has to come through Congress. This is why we need real progressives - dare I say, liberals - in Congress instead of corporate-beholden 'moderates', and this is why we need Marcy Winograd - not just for California, but for the nation.

Today's Marcy update:

Marcy will be interviewed today at 3pm PST (6pm EST) on Nicole Sandler's radio show "Radio Or Not" - you are invited to call in at

800-795-1159

Find out more about Marcy at Winograd For Congress.com

How Much Ass Does D.C. Douglas Kick?

2010-05-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

A lot!

Justice, Arizona Style

2010-05-14T23:16:00.000-07:00

Be very careful, my friends - the trouble is already beginning!

Thanks to my SL friends Rev.paperboy and Tammy and Dan (AKA Bookem and Dano)

Illegals, Watch Out - We're Taking Back Our Jobs!

2010-05-07T08:02:00.000-07:00

(reposted from Sept. 09)

There's a new movement afoot in the American Right. Inspired by the rabidly anti-immigration, tirelessly pro-American-worker Lou Dobbs, it's springing up all across America. From the meatpacking plants of Iowa to the dairy farms of Arizona, from the kitchens of New York's finest restaurants to the Salad Bowl of California's Salinas Valley, in hotels, motels, and Holiday Inns all across this great nation of ours, the patriotic men and women who for years have stood by and watched illegal immigrants swarming across the border to brazenly steal their jobs have had enough.

Formerly known as the Minute-Man Movement (or 'Beer Guts Across America'), whose aim was to merely monitor the flow of illegal immigration across the border between the U.S. and Mexico, the troubled group disbanded amid infighting and accusations of internal corruption and financial misconduct in 2007. Yet, the dissatisfaction and frustration felt by these hard-working American patriots has only grown more intense, as they watch job after job after job go to those with no legal right to that job, while they themselves, deserving natural-born citizens, sit at home on their couches, with an ice-cold Coors, a family-sized bag of Chee-tos and a remote in their hands as they wait around for the job that never seems to materialize.

Well, the time for waiting is over.

The time for action has arrived.

Illegal criminals, take notice - Conservative Americans are taking back their jobs!

Yes, from the ashes of the failed Minute-Man Movement, the Gimme Back My Job, Dammit Coalition (GBMJ,DC) has risen, and it has spread like wildfire among conservatives sick and tired of illegals taking the jobs from deserving American citizens. No longer content to wait for the government to do it for them, these patriots have taken matters into their own hands. Now they're doing more than just protesting or watching from the sidelines - they're taking back their Constitutional, God-given right to a job. Suddenly, you see them everywhere - on the sidewalk with a leaf-blower strapped to their back, in the parking lot of your favorite restaurant with the keys to your car or inside, balancing a heavy-laden bus tray full of dirty dishes as they adroitly refill your iced tea glass on their way back to the kitchen. You may find them bent over in a lettuce field under a blistering sun with a rake in their hand, or endangering their limbs with casually-maintained but lethally sharp meat-cutting machinery for fourteen hours or more a day while earning somewhere around three dollars an hour, with no benefits, medical insurance, workman's compensation, or even bathroom breaks.

Most of them say they've never been happier.

"For the first time in my life, I feel needed," says Coalition member Chuck B. Liggett, 70, a former accountant who now works in a chicken-packing plant in Amarillo, Texas. "When the floor boss screams at me for slowing down, I feel a surge of pride because what I do actually matters. Now, I do an honest day's work for my pay, and by the time I collapse on my filthy mattress on the floor of my stinking room at the end of my fifteen-hour shift, I know I really earned that forty dollars!"

And it's not only men who are flocking to this bold new movement. Conservative women are finding satisfaction, fulfillment and a sense of what it feels like to be a real American as they embrace this exciting, energetic new way of life. Darlene Simmons, 47, works in a factory in downtown Los Angeles, sewing elastic bands into men's underwear seven days a week.

"It works out great, because working seven days means that I can save the expense of a car and an apartment - not that I could afford them on my salary," she explains. "I just fall asleep sitting at my sewing machine, and when I wake up, I'm right there ready for another day of rewarding, eye-straining, repetitive-stress-injury-inducing work!"

The jobs bonanza has been beneficial for Darlene's whole family as well.

"We're going back to the good old-fashioned American work ethic that made this country great!" says Darlene. "My kids used to be spoiled, lazy, smart-mouthed and never satisfied. No matter how much stuff we bought them, it was never enough. Now my kids work in the factory right along with me! Even my seven-year-old daughter can sew a button on a fly with those itty-bitty hands of hers - she's pretty handy, considering how she was always so busy texting her little friends! And you'd better believe there's no more complaining - you should see them cry with happiness for a little half-cup of water!"

Not even Darlene's aged, infirm 94-years-young grandmother has to miss out on the fun - when she was fired from the factory for sewing her hand to a pair of extra-large briefs, she soon found work again as a housemaid to the factory owner's wife. With tears in her eyes, choked up and unable to speak for gratitude, Grammaw merely trembled with joy, as Darlene quickly interjected, "They're so good to us here!"

Conservatives are done with talking - now they're stepping up to the plate and claiming what's theirs. All those cushy jobs that the illegal immigrants have been stealing are now back in the rightful hands of natural citizens like Chuck and Darlene. Unemployment? These stalwarts don't know the meaning of the word.

As a wise American patriot once said, "How uniquely American."

Richard Zombeck of ShameTheBanks.org - Kicking Ass, Taking Names!

2010-04-27T08:02:00.000-07:00

Wow!

Richard Zombeck, HuffPo mortgage blogger and the founder of ShameTheBanks.org, where I have been blogging about our mortgage hell, is kicking some serious ass.

He is getting ready to go to Washington today armed with thousands of personal stories from people like us who are being kicked out of our homes by the very entities who caused this economic debacle in the first place - the banking/financial sector.

Richard has just been profiled by Bob Sullivan of the Red Tape Chronicles at MSNBC, and ShameTheBanks is bringing to light the fact that these foreclosures are not anomalies or the result of consumer irresponsibility, but a business model for the banks which will not change until or unless they are forced to.

I want to give a big shout-out and thank you to Richard, for helping me and helping others get their stories out there, and showing that each one of us can find a way to bring about change. It's daunting, given the enormity of the forces (and finances) arrayed against us, but it is not hopeless.

Roll on, Richard!

Update: Reprieve (for now!)

2010-04-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

Well, friends - it ain't over till it's over. That's all I'm saying.

Last week, we were sure we were toast. We talked to St. June on Friday morning, and she said that she didn't think that we were going to be able to pull this off; that they wanted our house and that was it. She said to my husband, "Why don't you give them a call yourself and see what they have to say." When he called, to our surprise we found out that not only was there no new sale date (we had been told that the new sale date was the 26th of April) but we had been taken off the foreclosure list.

Apparently the bankruptcy filing had put the house on hold. The bank asked my husband to take the house off of the bankruptcy hold so that they could 'offer him a loan mod'. St. June said to do no such thing; what they wanted was to lift the restriction so that they could take the house. Remember, OneWest bought IndyMac at a fire-sale price; this means that they bought our loan for pennies on the dollar, which means that the profit margin on our house is enormous. They have no interest in letting us stay in our house unless we make it more difficult to foreclose than to work with us.

This does not mean that they won't ultimately take the house, but it does mean that they're not taking it right now, which is a vast improvement.

I'll take limbo. Limbo beats 'game over'.

On Greed

2010-04-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

(cross-posted at ShameTheBanks.org)

Hello, my friends.

Today, I would like to talk to you about greed.

In the course of trying to save our house, it has become necessary to publish our personal business - something I was not excited about doing.

I realize that in reaching out for help in public, there are going to be people who are supportive, and also people who are critical. When you put your business in the street, that is part and parcel of the deal. It would be ridiculous to expect any different. If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. As a blogger, I know and accept those terms.

I have laid myself open to the finger-pointers, and I would like to respond.

My friend JP, who posted about my situation, wrote me today, saying,“People are already speculating that you guys are greedy and I had to tell them, No, they’re not.”

That is, if I may be so bold, high-larious.

If only.

This is how it always comes down for the individual.

In my post Entrepreneurship, Greed, 'Moral Hazard' and Music I tried to lay out some ideas that would explain what I’m talking about, but perhaps I can make it more clear here.

This is a microcosm of the kind of thinking that has brought our economy to its knees, and kicked the legs out from under the middle class.

Let me start by asking a question.

Is it ‘greed’ when a small business owner secures financing to pay for the first year’s operating expenses while the business gets going?

Would any sane person expect a business to start up with no capital, just saying, “Hey, if you can’t make enough profit to pay your bills as soon as you start, then you shouldn’t be in business”?

I would hope not.

But that seems to be what people expect of us.

As I wrote in the aforementioned earlier post, my husband and I are entrepreneurs. We are a small business - a two-person business. My husband is a session singer and songwriter. He has been in that house since 1983, including having to refinance to divide up the worth of the house during his divorce. He does not work for a company that pays his salary. His capital is his talent and experience. And that talent and experience have made it possible to live in a house in Los Angeles for over 25 years. We do whatever we can to get through the lean times so that we are able to produce our product. During one of those ‘lean times’ my husband wrote a TV theme song that paid our bills for five years. But if we had thrown in the towel instead of sticking with what we do as well as anyone in the world, that never would have come about, because we would not have been in the professional music environment where that kind of work opportunity exists.

Up until three years ago, we were able to weather the ups and downs of our unpredictable business, cutting back as our particular field got more and more difficult to make a living in. With careful management, we have been able to keep a home that our kids could grow up in. But when you have a business that is feast or famine, one thing that will not happen is that every bill will be paid on time. However, every bill does get paid. And we have had to understand that our credit score is going to reflect this, even though we live up to our obligations.

Guess what? Not having a perfect credit score does not make one ‘irresponsible’. It means that the way our income comes in is different than people who are salaried or guaranteed a certain amount of money per week, month or year. And when we’re out of work, there is no unemployment insurance to cover us till we can find more work.

I am sick to death of being accused of being ‘greedy’ for doing what we need to do to stay in a modest home. I am tired of being constantly pressed to defend my choice of profession - especially when one of the main reasons people give for deregulation is that regulation ‘penalizes risk-taking and stifles entrepreneurship’. Yes, it’s really important not to have any limits on how much money people can make by whatever means they can - but only if it’s a certain kind of entrepreneur, I guess. It's vital to the American Way of Life™ to encourage risk-taking in pursuit of riches. You want to talk about ‘greed’ - let’s talk about the idea that allowing credit card companies to charge arbitrary and usurious interest rates is ‘competitive’ instead of predatory.

When people say “You shouldn’t own a home if you can’t afford it,” that is really not what they mean. They are making a knee-jerk moral judgment about you. Let me clue you - it would not be cheaper to live in an apartment or rent a house. And, guess what? You have to have some kind of decent credit score to rent the crappiest house or dinkiest apartment. They throw around this word ‘greedy’ without having the least idea of what that entails. I am not going to dignify these attacks with specific numbers - you don’t get to judge how my family lives our lives or spends our money because we have made public our situation with a predatory lender.

My issue is not with being broke - my issue is with being lied to, cheated and stolen from.

The reason that we took a predatory loan is that no other ones were open to us, and that we were told that taking a high-interest loan for a year would improve our credit score, and that at the end of that year we could get a better loan. When you do not have the luxury of knowing in advance how much or little money you will be making, you have to do the best you can with what is at your disposal.

We kept up our end of the bargain.

We made those outrageous payments on time for a year.

Had IndyMac kept up their end of the bargain, we would not be having this issue. But it took two more years of those usurious payments to break us.

Dear friends, our ‘greed’ is not the issue. We willingly forgo things that most of you would not consider doing without. Our priorities are not material things - new cars, clothes, vacations, furniture, restaurants; everything we have is second-hand, thrift-shop, broken, or old. We do not use credit cards, and have no credit card debt. Our only debt is our home. Our priorities are our kids, our time together, our music. But one thing we will fight for is a home that our children can feel secure in.

We will not stand by and allow ourselves to be cheated and stolen from by a company whose greed was a major contributing factor to the collapse of our economy, simply because we don’t work for someone who pays us every two weeks and should be ashamed of ourselves because of it.

If we were in the same situation, and had a ‘regular’ job with steady pay, and were laid off, people would not be accusing us of being ‘greedy’ and irresponsible. But it's happening to those people too. The real ‘greedsters’ have raped the rest of the country - and been bailed out for doing it! No one is taking any money away from them; they’re simply given more - out of our pockets!

I have had it up to here with living in Opposite World, where the biggest and greediest are admired for risk-taking, lying, and outright fraud in search of the biggest profits, and those of us who are trying to make our way in the world without starving or living under an overpass are condemned as ‘greedy’.

It is Big Greed, in fact, that has brought this country to the economic disaster we are now experiencing. It has taken somewhere around thirty years for it to happen but the policies of union-busting and deregulation have resulted in such an unequal balance of power between corporations and individuals that real wages have gone down steadily for thirty years for all but the one-tenth-of-one-percent, who have seen their income skyrocket 400%. Wages - money made from actual work - are taxed at 30%, and investment income - dividends from speculation (not used as a pejorative term; merely descriptive) - are taxed at 15%.

So let’s think about that. Since 1980, it has happened at an incremental level - not a giant crash, but in a imperceptible, ‘boiling frog’ kind of way, where it just gets a little harder each year to stay where you are, lifestyle-wise. So, people don’t realize that as a group the middle class - the American triumph of the twentieth century - has fallen farther and farther behind, until the inevitable happened - they could not spend any more.

Rather than wagging a disapproving finger at people who use more and more credit, we should be asking, “Why are people being put in a position where they need credit just to stay in the same place?” Why should you have to go into debt just to sustain a normal, middle-class lifestyle? Why should you have to owe the cost of a small house just to go to college? It was not that way when our parents went to school. We are simultaneously required to spend money to keep the economy afloat, and blamed for it at the same time.

We have been systematically stolen from for 30 years and the bill has finally come due. There is nothing left to steal.

So, please, keep your sanctimonious remarks about ‘greed’ to yourself. Go insult someone else. You have no idea what you are talking about.

The Up Side Of Hard Times - A Little Help From My Friends

2010-04-15T08:30:00.000-07:00

When hard times are upon you, it's good to know you have people in your corner. I have gotten so much support from friends old and new - some are complete strangers, some are dear friends that I have known for years; some I've met and some I have never met in person.

One reason I have put the time and energy into blogging that I have is because of the blogging community. I have met some wondeful people who have become like family even though we have not seen each other face to face. Bloggers take care of our own.

I'd like to take a minute to say 'thanks' to my bro JurassicPork from Welcome Back to Pottersville. One of the coolest projects I've ever taken on as a blogger was a Photoshop extravaganza of "It's A Wonderful Life" recast with some of our favorite political and social characters from the Bush years. JP wrote the copy and designed the pictures; I did the Photoshop. I have to say I thought it was brilliant. I laughed my ass off while doing it.

JP has been kind enough to throw a blast my way re: our mortgage debacle.

It's this kind of thing that gives me motivation to keep on keeping on. Thanks, bro!

Obama - For the Supreme Court, Let Limbaugh Be Your Guide!

2010-04-12T08:50:00.000-07:00

Dear President Obama,

You have been warned by your Republican friends that if you dare to pick a Supreme Court nominee who is anything less than radically right-wing, that a filibuster will be the result.

But, never fear! Your good buddy Rush Limbaugh has some words of advice for you! Sure, they may be a couple of years old, but I'm sure he means them just as much today as he did in 2005.

Rush said to tell them to shut the hell up:

"I'm tired of these Democrats acting like they won the election. Somebody needs to stand up and say, "When you win the election, you pick the nominees. Until then, shut up! Just shut up! Just go away! Bury yourselves in your rat holes and don't come out until you win an election. When you win an election, you can put all these socialist wackos, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, all over the court, but until then, SHUT UP! You are really irritating me."

So, come on, Obama! What are you waiting for? It doesn't matter who you pick - the Republicans are going to act like you nominated William Ayers. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, right? Go for a big fat socialist wacko! The biggest, fattest, socialest wacko you can dig up! Rushbo's got your back - what more do you need?

Sincerely, Alicia Morgan

(wow - thanks to a heads-up via fellow blogger Steve J at RADAMISTO , I find that Bartcop linked to my cross-post on The Smirking Chimp! Cool beans!)

Obama's Next Supreme Court Nominee?

2010-04-10T00:55:00.001-07:00

Anita Hill.

Hey There, Tom Hoenig - Do You Like Big Blondes?

2010-04-02T09:36:00.000-07:00

My new financial crush? Kansas City Fed President Thomas M. Hoenig, who makes me all swoony when he advocates for breaking up the megabanks, criticizes 'too big to fail' and says oh-so-seductive things like "I don't think we have any business guaranteeing Wall Street when we're unable to guarantee Main Street."

The U.S. should bust up its megabanks and impose strict laws curbing the size and complexity of financial institutions, a top Federal Reserve official told the Huffington Post.
In a 45-minute interview this week, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas M. Hoenig, who's emerged as one of the few influential voices calling for a fundamental redesign of a broken U.S. financial system:

Lambasted the tilted playing field that benefits Wall Street banks over Main Street banks;
Called the idea that the U.S. needs megabanks to compete globally a "fantasy";
Said Congress should mandate simple, easily understood and enforceable rules -- rather than guidelines -- so regulators can restrain financial firms and rein in the financial system;
Prodded the Senate to get tougher on permanently ending Too Big To Fail by enacting laws that would take away much of the discretion currently held by policymakers (who bailed out financial firms when confronted with these decisions in late 2008);
And criticized the Federal Reserve's ongoing policy to keep the main interest rate near zero because it "guarantee[s] a spread to Wall Street", enabling unearned profits and "encourag[ing] speculation."
Hoenig's criticisms echo those made by reformers pushing to remake a financial system that melted down in 2008 after years of excessive risk-taking and loose regulation finally took its toll, causing the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression and costing the nation more than 8 million jobs.

Talk dirty to me!

Deadbeats Debtors vs. Doing Business? Double Standard? Depends.

2010-04-01T11:03:00.000-07:00

What's wrong with this picture?

A homeowner who walks away from an impossible mortgage which is double what his property is worth is a deadbeat who will suffer for years, credit-wise, for his decision.

But for the big boys? Not so much.

The rules are different, though, for the walkaway of all walkaways.

That title is reserved for what happened to one of New York's trophy properties, the 56-building Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complex. Spanning 80 acres on Manhattan's east side, it's the largest single-owned residential area in the city. Its red brick buildings, built by Metropolitan Life in the 1940s for World War II veterans, are still a haven for the city's middle class.

Commercial real-estate firm Tishman and its partner, investment firm BlackRock, paid $5.4 billion to buy the property from MetLife in late 2006 -- right at the market's peak. They hoped to make money by converting rent-regulated apartments into luxury condos and raising rents.

Then the housing crash hit. The value now: $1.8 billion.

And you thought you overpaid for your house.

Tishman said last week that it was turning the property back over to creditors to avoid filing for bankruptcy protection. In recent weeks, Tishman failed to restructure $4.4 billion in debt, and couldn't find another buyer, according to a statement from the company.

Tishman exits the deal with a ding to its reputation, but it will be fine. It still has Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Center in New York, and dozens of properties in cities worldwide. The company has about $33 billion in assets.

Helping homeowners stay in their homes is rewarding irresponsible and reckless behavior. After all, no one 'deserves' to own a home. Just because for 60 or 70 years the mantra of home ownership has been touted as the American Dream, and the tax structure ridiculously favors owning over renting, and just because people were told that buying a home is the best investment you can make, and that there was no better time than now to buy - in fact, not to buy would be the height of stupidity - doesn't mean you shouldn't have known better. Even though every financial pundit and economic expert was shouting it to the rooftops, somehow Joe and Jane Worker, with their in-depth knowledge of the intricacies of speculation, derivatives and credit swaps, should have known more than all of the Wall Street Masters of the Universes put together.

Yes, and they must be punished.

Do you have cable TV? Do you have a cell phone? Do you buy name-brands at the grocery store? Why, you irreponsible, greedy lout! Do you have a gym membership? Do you ever go to the movies instead of watching (non-cable) TV? Do you ever go out to lunch instead of brown-bagging it? Do you ever buy a latte at Starbucks? Why, you profligate spendthrift, you! No wonder you're in trouble, the way you just throw money around. That's the problem with you people. You just want everything, without ever thinking about whether or not you can afford it.

It's called moral hazard, and you deadbeats will continue to take advantage of those of us who are industrious and thrifty if you are allowed to get away with it.

Unless, of course, you are the CEO of the banks or investment firms who got rich off of stealing from homeowners. Then, the idea of being penalized in any way - by not getting your multi-million-dollar bonuses, by a salary cut, by getting your ass booted out into the street (or into jail) - is not to be considered. Why should you be punished, just because you caused the collapse of the American economy? You were just being a savvy businessman. That's the beauty of the Free Market™! We can't go around stifling initiative and discouraging entrepreneurship, can we? What are we, Russia?

Moral hazard? Don't be ridiculous. That's only for the little people.

So, how to make it better? Vilify the victims, pamper the perpetrators.

Carrot-and-stick? Sure! Here's how that works: beat the homeowners to a bloody pulp with the stick, and offer the golden carrot to the banks. If you have the temerity to offer any criticisms to the banksters whatsoever, be very sure that they are covered in 'pretty pleases' and are the mildest of suggestions only, which the banks are free to disregard - in fact, just forget anything was said, and please accept the abject apologies for implying that their behavior was anything less than honorable.

Putting the blame on homeowners for taking the advice of the experts, who are paid handsomely for their expertise, is like blaming the patient for following the advice of their doctors - not just one doctor, but the entire AMA - for prescribing an expensive medication that makes them sick. Maybe the doctors didn't know - or care - how dangerous the drug was, but they sure as hell all made a fortune from the pharmaceutical companies who gave them huge amounts of money to prescribe it, so it's no skin off their back.

And, let me tell you, this makes me sick.

Double standard? Depends.

Yes, I'm wearing them. I'm that pissed off.

Money, Mortgages and Marriage

2010-03-26T14:46:00.000-07:00

Here is another area where the reprehensibly criminal behavior of the banking and finance industries has done immeasurable damage - the area of family life.

Financial problems are one of the major stressors on a marriage. The issues that money represents are deeper than the actual dollars and cents; money represents power, control, independence, self-worth, security - issues that cut to the core of a relationship. But what is sad is that, at the very time when partners need each other's support the most - during hard times - is often the time when the pressures of financial trouble cause them to lash out at the closest person to them - their spouse. And even the best marriages have their weak spots, which under pressure can turn into ruptures.

That is the cruelest blow of all. It's one thing to lose a structure. As much as we value our house, in the end it's just a 'thing'. But our spouse, our family - that is what really matters, and unfortunately that can also become a casualty in the war being waged against the middle class and poor.

My husband and I are determined that, no matter what, our money problems are not going to cost us our treasure, which is our marriage and kids. These thieves cannot take that away from us. So we have talked about it and made a pact that we are going to pull closer together instead of being driven apart by the pressures of foreclosure and bankruptcy.

When we get irritated, frustrated, fearful or anxious - as we will and we do - we are going to stop and think before we snap at each other. And if one of us does 'snap', the other will not take it to the next level, but understand that we are both under enormous pressure and let it go. And the one who snaps knows that it's important to apologize.

We are not going to blame each other for the situation we're in. We know whose fault it is that we - and millions of other Americans - are in this mess, and that we both have done the best we can. Instead, we are going to work together to try to get out of it. If I 'win' and you 'lose', I lose too. Who wins? The banks.

We are not going to isolate ourselves from each other. Not that we both don't need some alone time, but to disconnect emotionally from each other is the death knell for a relationship.

We are going to make the extra effort to 'woo' each other, and be conscious of why we fell in love in the first place. We remember that of all the people in the world, our spouse and kids are the ones in our corner, and the ones it is most important to treat with kindness and respect.

We are going to appreciate and be grateful for what we do have, and not take it for granted or focus on what we don't have. We know so many people who have every material thing you could want and more, and very few of those people have happy family lives - acquiring and keeping all that stuff tends to require a kind of single-mindedness that can take precendence over a spouse and kids.

The banksters may be able to take away our house, but they can't take away our home unless we let them. If I let them take my home, where my heart is, then they really do win. And that is a price I will not pay.

Our Mortgage Journey - What's Next?

2010-03-26T01:24:00.000-07:00

Since we are right smack in the middle of working on a loan modification, and since I have decided to share our story in the interests of giving information to others who may be in the same boat and shining a light on the process, I am inviting you, my friends, to come along with us as we navigate the shark-infested waters.

I have absolutely no idea how this is going to end up. My best hope is that OneWest decides to give us a loan mod with a decent interest rate, maybe a principal reduction, so that we can afford to stay in the house. Whether this will happen or not, I can't begin to tell you. We may lose the house to foreclosure; we may do a short sale - who knows? All I know is that we are going to fight hard to keep this house.

Our house was scheduled to be sold at auction on March 15th, but my husband went down to the courthouse that day with our bankruptcy paperwork to make sure they did not sell it. Our new sale date is sometime around the end of April.

On March 2nd, we requested RESPA documents by registered mail. We got a signed receipt by return mail, but we have not received the documents as of yet.

Tomorrow, we will be meeting with our mortgage broker, who has been working tirelessly to help us keep our house. I call her St. June. We will talk with her to determine what our next step will be.

I'll fill you in tomorrow. Wish us luck!

A New Resource For Mortgage Issues - ShameTheBanks.org!

2010-03-22T09:56:00.000-07:00

I am very pleased to announce that I will be writing for a great new blog dedicated to exposing the shameful truth about what is happening in the banking and finance industries, written by people who are dealing with the reality of the loan modification process that was intended to help people stay in their homes, but instead has given the banks more incentive to foreclose. It's called ShameTheBanks.org, run by Huffington Post mortgage blogger Richard Zombeck, and will make its official debut tomorrow.

While blogging over the last few days about my own mortgage woes, I came across his excellent post "I Refuse to be Ripped Off". You know me - a post with that title is sure to catch my eye, so I read it and followed the link to his own site, where I commented on another of his articles, "Loan Modifications: a $4 Billion Con Game". He contacted me and invited me to join the Shame the Banks team, and now I will be hooked up with all the most pertinent information, as well as contributing to a blog that I feel should be required reading for anyone with any connection at all to the home loan situation.

About Shame the Banks:

This site has been created for me, for you, and for millions of other Americans fighting the banking system to save the roof over their heads. This site is not just about shaming the banks however; it’s about shaming each and every person that any of us have reached out to for assistance only to be denied, pushed aside and lied to.

It has become abundantly clear that Congress, Wall Street and the Banks are not concerned about the American Family. Daily we turn on the TV and watch the endless Dog and Pony shows that are created to distract Americans from the real issues facing us and our families.

We are done being lied to and done being treated as second hand citizens. It is time that the truth is told and we, who have been - and still are being - dragged thru the dirty cogs of the Banking Industry, are going to tell it. It is time that each and every member of Congress is held accountable for their actions or inactions that has led this great Nation to what it has become today.

At Shame the Banks, there are articles covering the latest developments in foreclosure and mortgage issues, as well as upcoming focus on credit card and student loan issues, blogs, and also personal stories from the people who are going through the process of attempting to keep their houses after being lied to, scammed and cheated by the banksters.

If you have a story or are involved in or considering a loan mod, I urge you to go over to Shame the Banks and share it. The more people stand up and speak out on this, the more the public will learn the reality of what's going on in the mortgage crisis, not the media spin.

Plus, I'll be there with you!

Please, Bite the Fattest, Whitest Part of My Ass, John Boehner

2010-03-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

(Warning: the following post contains subject matter and language that some readers may find objectionable. Including me.)

Now, it's personal.

I thought I was pissed off before.

Motherfuck.

Is there no end to the gall, the hubris, the entitlement, the greed, the stunning hypocrisy of these disgusting sons of bitches?

I was kick-started into blogging for real in early 2005, with the advent of the Bankruptcy Bill, one of the foulest and most vile pieces of legislation to be excreted from the alimentary tract of Congress. Elizabeth Warren was writing about it at the time, which was when I began following her work. It's five years later, and I am now one of the people who has been sucker-punched by the end result of the long-term thievery by these white-collar criminals who have re-distributed the nation's wealth topward with the blessing of the system.

Class warfare? Damn skippy. The same kind of warfare that was waged against Iraq - a weakened, destitute and war-ravaged country, with no military to speak of, yet possessed of resources that Bushco and the neocons were determined to make their own, by hook or by crook.

And now House Minority Leader John Boehner (yeah, sure, it's pronounced 'Bay-ner'. Uh huh. Right.) is standing proudly in solidarity with the poor beleaguered banksters against the might of those ~~little punk staffers~~ all-powerful regulators who are determined to crush these fragile blossoms beneath the heel of their regulatory jackboots, so of course this will only mean that banks will have no alternative but to... deny credit and raise fees. See, it was those darn oppressive regulations that caused the financial industry to collapse in the first place. If only there were less regulation, everything would have been just fine! If it wasn't for those rich and powerful homeowners, having the nerve to complain about being used as ATMs for the financial sector, and not just handing over their homes at gunpoint, this whole unpleasantness could have been avoided.

See what they made us do?

It's gotten to the point where the oligarchs don't even try to pretend to care abut what they've done to the rest of America. When the House Minority Leader can openly proclaim his disdain for the people who are trying, however ineffectively, to find a way to prevent more of the uncontrolled speculation and thievery that has plunged us into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and shamelessly suck up to the perpetrators of this disaster, we know that they are secure in the knowledge that the game continues to be rigged in Wall Street's favor, and that the noise from Main Street is nothing more than the irritating buzzing of mosquitos.

And the idea that people have a right to be protected from the excesses of banking financial speculation? Ask Boehner:

Boehner said he urged bankers not to be shy when meeting with the lawmaker staff members and to send a message that new regulations and taxes translates to into banks having less available for lending.

"Don't let those little punk staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves," Boehner said. "All of us are hearing from our friends and constituents on lack of credit, you can't get a loan, the more your government takes and taxes, the more regulations you have to comply with the more cost you have there and less amount you are going to have available to loan to customers."

And what is the solution?

The banking committee is concerned about the bill's intention to create an independent consumer financial protection division, with a presidentially appointed chairperson, within the Federal Reserve. They argue that bank regulators should continue to be responsible for protecting consumers as well as making sure financial institutions have sufficient capital. The proposed consumer unit would write rules for mortgages and credit card products. (emphasis mine)

There you have it, friends.

Just let the banks regulate themselves.

After all, it's worked marvelously so far.

And we certainly can't have the poor widdle banks being taken advantage of, now, can we, John? They should no longer continue to cower and cringe meekly in a corner while the thuggish regulators run rough-shod all over them, am I right?

Banks? Taken advantage of by Congressional staffers? Are you motherfucking kidding me?

Well, John Boehner, you and your bankster butt-buddies can kiss my whole entire ass. And go fuck yourselves crosswise while you're at it.

Go Visit My Friend's New Blog - "Metamemes and Hyper-Hypocrisy"

2010-03-17T17:49:00.000-07:00

My friend zenguitarguy is a very talented, smart and thoughtful person - we've played together on and off for many years, and in fact did a gig in Bali together a while back. He has a new blog worth checking out called Metamemes and Hyper-Hypocrisy. Go there - you'll be intrigued, I promise you.

An Interesting Article On IndyMac/OneWest

2010-03-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article on the banks that are trying to kick us out of our home.

And an interesting video...

Nineteen months after the catastrophic failure of one of Sacramento's top lenders, Pasadena-based IndyMac Bank, a flurry of local lawsuits alleges that the bank's successor – OneWest Bank – is systematically working to push home loan borrowers into foreclosure.

The allegations filed in the Eastern District of U.S. Bankruptcy Court claim that OneWest can make more money by foreclosing than by keeping borrowers in their homes. That's due to its so-called "shared-loss" agreement with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., at least 10 local lawsuits allege.

A video made in Fairfield and circulating widely on the Internet also alleges that OneWest stands to earn millions from taxpayers by foreclosing on borrowers as a result of its shared-loss agreement with the FDIC.

The FDIC declined to comment on the lawsuits, but it recently denounced the video's "blatantly false claims." The agency told The Bee that its agreement with OneWest contains provisions to make sure the lender is taking adequate steps to modify loans.

OneWest declined to comment on either the lawsuits or the video.

The FDIC, which seized IndyMac in July 2008, sold the failed institution to Pasadena-based OneWest in March 2009.

As part of the deal, the FDIC agreed to absorb some losses from the troubled loan portfolio. That's after OneWest absorbs the first $2.5 billion in losses, the FDIC said.

But Sacramento bankruptcy lawyer Peter Macaluso claims the shared-loss agreement will reward OneWest for foreclosing on homes. Here's how, he said: The company bought IndyMac's troubled portfolio at a 30 percent discount. It can count on the FDIC eventually reimbursing 80 percent or more of its losses – and also can keep proceeds from the foreclosure sales.

"They're deliberately blowing people out in a systematic pattern," said Macaluso.
He has filed eight lawsuits in U.S. Bankruptcy Court on behalf of area IndyMac borrowers who have filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/02/21/2552932/onewest-bank-accused-of-pushing.html#ixzz0iNYPMyKc

Safe For At Least Six Weeks!

2010-03-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

Update - the next sale date is in six weeks; a lot can happen in that time.

Thanks to all for the encouragement!

It's Her Fault, Your Honor - She Was Asking For It!

2010-03-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

“You should have never taken that loan, you should have just moved out of your house; you don’t know anything about money, budgeting, etc., etc. It’s all your own fault so why should you be able to stay in a house you can’t afford?” And then someone will inquire as to whether you eat out in restaurants for lunch when you should be brown-bagging it.

Well, I can tell you that, in spite of the ups and downs of our finances, we would have been able to afford the house if we had not been charged a usurious interest rate after the year that we agreed to suck it up for. When all the ‘best’ financial advice at the time was to refinance, that was what we did. We sucked it up and did whatever it took to make those crazy payments on time for a year. But for the next 2 years we had been paying that same crazy money, and that was what broke us.

If I hear one more know-it-all lecture us on ‘budgeting’, I think I will scream. When you NEVER know exactly how much money you will be making from month to month, you can’t make up a budget. A budget consists of income as well as outgo, and that is something we never can figure. But until this particular debacle, we have managed to do well enough - not rich or even well-off, but able to stretch the ‘up’ times enough to cover the ‘down’ times. There were plenty of times that we made large chunks of money that were enough to pay our bills through the lean times. My husband once wrote a TV theme song (in half an hour) that beat out hundreds of other submissions and that one song paid our bills for 5 years. You work every single day - some of it pays off and some does not. As a session singer/songwriter, that is the way the work goes - you just throw everything you have against the wall, and some of it sticks.

My point in writing about entrepreneurship and risk is to point out that - yes, the nature of our business involves risk. Nobody pays us a salary to do music. And there is no other work that we are qualified to do that will pay us more than what we make in the music business.

So does the fact that we have a high-risk business mean that we can be screwed with impunity? We can be cheated, stolen from and lied to, and dealt with in bad faith, and we have no right to complain? And when the companies that cheated us and lied to us go under, they can get bailed out and we can’t even get, not a bailout, but restitution? The banks took risks in order to make more profit than they could if they were obeying the law. We took risks to keep our family in our home.

It really reminds me of a rape case, where the rapist attacks the victim’s character as a defense - “It’s her fault, Your Honor - she was asking for it! Did you see that short skirt she had on? She was a total slut! What was she doing in a nightclub if she didn’t want it?”

Entrepreneurship, Risk, ‘Moral Hazard' and Music

2010-03-13T17:24:00.000-08:00

My husband and I are on the verge of losing the house he bought in 1983. We are musicians by profession, with all the financial ups and downs that go with our job, but until a few years ago, we were able to make the 'up' times last us through the 'down' times. Due to a particularly long
'down time' we refinanced our home, and ended up with a predatory loan. We were told that if we accepted a very high rate for a year and paid on time, at the end of that year we would be able to get a more affordable loan. Of course, this did not happen. Now we are fighting an uphill battle to keep the house. There are many people that say we deserve what we get for taking the predatory loan. I can see their point, but I would also like to present my views on this subject.

It’s easy to sit back smugly, point one’s finger and say, “You should never have taken out that loan. You don’t deserve to own a home.” But I think this is part of a bigger question, and this question involves the role of entrepreneurship and risk, and how these are viewed in our society, both socially and legally.

What is the ultimate rationale for allowing unlimited profits to businesses? What is the reason we lower taxes on the wealthiest? What is the philosophical underpinning of American capitalism itself? Ask any self-styled ‘free-market capitalist’ and he will say “To reward risk.” To do away with that precept is nothing but the foulest, vilest, nanny-statest socialism. What he means by that is that to limit the amount of profit that a person or a business can make is to make that person or business unwilling to take the risks that need to be taken in order to be successful.

Regulation in business, likewise, is frowned upon by those who would promote the prevailing view of ‘free-market capitalism.’ They argue that this is what makes America great - to start with nothing but your own two hands and by investing one’s capital, be it only one’s physical labor, to gain returns from that investment. Now, to ‘invest’ is different than to be ‘employed’. Employment is a contract between employer and employee where the employee is guaranteed payment in exchange for labor. Investment, on the other hand, is guaranteed no such thing. An investment can fail. But when an investment pays off, the payoff for the investor will be larger than what would have been earned through simple employment, thus ‘creating wealth.’ This is the very core of the American Dream, and supposedly what sets us above and apart from all other nations (American exceptionalism).

Those who engender great profits from investing - risk-taking - are lauded in our society, regardless of the means used to reap these gains. And great care is taken legally to ensure that investors and entrepreneurs are richly rewarded for their willingness to risk their capital. The idea is to reward initiative and risk, and to put caps on what can be earned through initiative and risk is to thwart the incentive to take those risks.

This, by the way, is the same rationale used to justify multi-million-dollar bonuses to the CEOs of the biggest banks and investment firms. In this instance, their ‘capital’ is their experience with being CEOs of banks and investment firms. Heaven forbid, if they are not paid gazillions of dollars, they might be reluctant to take the helms of these corporations, and do the magnificent jobs that they have been doing so far.

So I think it is fair to say that our current system is set up to reward risk in order to ‘create wealth.’ And those who take risks and become wealthy are held up and touted as an example of what America is all about. But there is risk, and there is risk.

In the world of big business, most risk is taken with OPM - other people’s money. There are very few entrepreneurs at the upper levels of business who actually ‘risk’ their own ability to buy food and have a roof over their head, or medical care should they become sick. And if they fail in their risk-taking, it is the people at the bottom of the chain who pay the price; who lose their pensions, lose their jobs, lose their homes. When a big company is failing, the first thing to be done is to lay off employees - who have not signed up for risk-taking, but have done their jobs in the expectation that they would be paid for their work, and that the money set aside from their paychecks to fund their retirement would be intact.

Even when these ‘big cheeses’ fail (like Donald Trump), over and over, they are admired for their willingness to take risks. And I would bet that Donald Trump has never had a day where he could not buy groceries for his kids, or had to sleep in his car, no matter how many millions or billions of dollars he loses in investments, and is given the credit to do it all over again.

Now, let’s talk about capital. Every person possesses capital - whether it be tangible or intangible. It could be financial, or it could be a physical or mental skill-set. It could be education, appearance, or connections. And that capital can either be exchanged or invested.

My husband and I are entrepreneurs, and our ‘capital’ is our music. This capital has been gained through great risk. Every artist who develops their art to a degree which makes it competitive in the market has done so with absolutely no guarantee that it will ever pay off financially. To a certain extent you can say that about anyone who invests in their education, but most skill-sets that one gains through a college education has a specific application that can be counted on to bring in a certain amount of money through the exchange of employment.

An artist has no such guarantee. Yet, everyone listens to music; buys CDs (or mp3s), goes to the movies, goes to concerts, watches television, reads books, has paintings or photographs on their walls. They go to the ballet, to the opera; they go to baseball games, football games, basketball games, monster-truck pulls, NASCAR races. Entertainers are often dismissed as frivolous and unneccesary, but can you, for one minute, imagine your life without any form of entertainment?

I am serious as a heart attack. Do it right now.

Just picture your day. No music of any kind, no TV to watch, no art to look at, no books to read, no movie to see, no game to go to. To the people who belittle my choice of career, or my right to live like other working people because I have chosen to be an artist, I want to say to them, “Where do you live? I’m coming to your house and I am going to take away all your CDs. I’m taking the pictures off of your walls. I’m taking the TV. I’m taking the books off of your shelves. These are not things that you have put any value upon, so you don’t need them.”

Every artist, no matter how successful right now, began their career with no guarantee that they would ever make a dime from their art. But to truly develop their art to a level which is, as I said before, ‘competitive in the market’, it takes a commitment that consumes 100% of your time and passion. (And please don’t bother giving me examples of people who just ‘happened to make it’ accidentally, or without much effort on their part, or who became famous while just doing their thing on weekends, or whatever - the ‘American Idol’ phenomenon. These examples, while high-profile, are anomalies.) Everyone is eager to embrace the art and the artist once they are ‘successful’ but don’t give much thought to what it took to get there. Do they just think all this art that they profess to love so much, and that they depend on for emotional sustenance (and don’t say you don’t, unless you don’t ever listen to music, watch TV, read, go to movies or concerts or sporting events) just dropped out of the sky? The people who make art have sacrificed much of the security that most other people take for granted - that if you work, you will get money in return.

I believe that being a musician is one of the most noble callings on this earth, and I take the responsibility of this gift we have been given very seriously. Every single CD you listen to, each and every book you read, every picture you look at, was created by someone who was consumed by the love of their art, and the dedication to give it everything they have. And, no - it’s not an ‘easy’ life. Nothing worth doing is ‘easy’. But the rest of the public gets to enjoy it without having to go through what these artists (famous or unknown) went through to get where they are. So it’s easy to be smug about what an irresponsible job choice it is. Irresponsible? We are a conduit for the emotions, the love, the hurt, the passion of the world; we connect hearts; we are translators of the soul. I think that is a very serious responsibility indeed.

As a nation, we have gradually devalued the importance of art, and of art education. When Reagan came into office, one of the first things he did (besides union-busting) was to slash art from the budget. Yet there is still a market and a deep need for art in our lives - I would posit more than ever, given the economic circumstances we face right now. During the Great Depression, people flocked to entertainment to give them some solace and distraction from the dire straits they were in. And to say that artists should be able to create great art as a side hobby is ridiculously unrealistic and shows complete ignorance of what Art really entails.

Am I saying that artists do not need to be responsible for themselves and their expenses? Absolutely not. And most artists have chosen to live as small as possible, foregoing many of the comforts that most people expect out of their lives, in order to devote themselves to their art. But the life of an artist is a series of ups and downs - much like Big Business.

This brings us back to entrepreneurship.

In the world of Big Business, great care is taken to ensure that risk-takers are rewarded. Although lip-service is paid to the ‘free market’, in reality, these big businesses are able to take these huge investment risks because they know they have a safety net - the American taxpayer. And, as we have seen, the results of these policies is to ‘privatize the profits and socialize the losses’. Otherwise, there would be no ‘wealth creation’! These businesses need the incentive of limitless wealth in order to take the risks to create it. And even when they do fail so spectacularly, you will not find these people who actually created the collapse without food, without a roof over their heads. They will just move on to the next company they can ransack, all while living a suitably lavish lifestyle - perhaps they’ll have to sell a plane, but they won’t be going without food, shelter or medical care.

The theory is that this sort of incentive is necessary to promote entrepreneurship, and without it there will be no innovation - that entrepreneurs will say “Why should I bother busting my ass to create a business or develop a product if my rewards are going to be limited?” This theory is flawed.

The truth is, you and I know that the entrepreneurial personality will take risks and gamble no matter what - it’s built into their DNA. If they’re in prison they’ll wheel and deal for cigarettes. A true entrepreneur innovates for the sheer challenge of it and will do it regardless of the circumstances, just like an artist creates art from that same deep need.

When regular people take financial risks, expecting to be bailed out if they fail, this is called ‘moral hazard’. Notice the word ‘moral’. There is a metaphor that many people carry around in their subconscious that says “wealth=morality”. This is ‘what’s the matter with Kansas’. This is why poor grandmas on welfare will donate their Social Security money to wealthy televangelists, and why they don’t resent the trappings of success that these TV preachers have - in fact, it is just the opposite. When they see the planes, the mansions, the lavish church buildings, they feel that these people must be being rewarded by God for being morally superior. And even people who are non-religious still see the wealthiest among us as being morally superior - harder-working, smarter, more virtuous - even if the reality is that they have engendered this wealth through no effort of their own or by less-than-honorable means. This is not a conscious revelation - if asked, very few people will say, “Yes, they’re better people than I am because they’re rich” but subconsciously this is a powerful metaphor. And the corollary to this, of course, is “poverty=immorality”. This translates into “The reason you’re poor is because you are lazy, dishonest, irresponsible and greedy.”

My husband and I did not get into the music business to get rich. We are musicians because we have the ‘have-to’ that drives creative people, and we have worked hard all our lives to develop our talents and skills. There have been times in our careers that we have been extremely well-rewarded financially, and there are times that we have not. We are aware that the ‘up’ times do not make us more worthy, and the ‘down’ times do not make us less worthy.We know that great art often goes unnoticed and unrewarded, and that mediocre art is often rewarded lavishly, and that financial success or failure is not an indication of its intrinsic worth. And we are willing to take the vicissitudes of our business as they come. But we are not willing to lay down and accept being cheated. If I am dealt with in bad faith, it is not being ‘moral’ and ‘responsible’ to let them take my home without a fight. If I am stolen from, it is not immoral to ask for help in taking back what’s been taken from me. And I will not accept the label of ‘moral hazard’ until it applies across the board.

When it comes right down to it, it’s not just people like my husband and me who are the risk-takers. Every single person lives their life with a certain amount of risk. When you have a regular job with a regular paycheck, you are betting that your paycheck will arrive next Friday, that you will still have a job next week. The risk is much less than mine, but the risk is there nevertheless. Ask the people who worked for Enron. People like my husband and me are the canaries in the coal mine. Because of the nature of what we do, we will be the first to suffer losses during times of economic crisis. But this is not just happening to us - it’s happening to people with steady jobs, steady paychecks, who have never been late on a payment. When you’re laid off, how can you be blamed when you can’t meet your financial obligations? Are you suddenly morally deficient? Should you be living in a cardboard box because of the chance that someday you may not be able to afford your home?

And it is the very people who have caused these circumstances through their excessive and illegal risk-taking who have brought this situation about - and they have been bailed out. They have been bailed out by the people who did not take those risks, who did not reap the incredible wealth that came from high-risk investments, and who are now losing the very food from their mouths and roofs over their heads. And I will not accept insult on top of injury from those who feel they are in a position to judge who is ‘responsible’ and who is not.

Maybe we will lose our house. I hope not, but I will not let it go without a fight because The Powers That Be tell me I should be a good little peon. Do I think I’m ‘entitled’ to keep it? No, but was Wall Street ‘entitled’ to a bailout? When these standards are held consistently across the board, then we can talk. But we as a society need to think about what ‘risk’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ really mean, and not only have a safety net for those who are ‘too big to fail’.

The Bank Is Stealing My House THIS Monday

2010-03-12T10:52:00.000-08:00

(Update - to all of you who have taken the time to stop by with your support and advice - thank you! I really appreciate it.)

After writing to my friend Blue Gal, and getting my situation on paper, so to speak, I've decided to put it on my blog. This is the one of the hardest things I've ever done as a blogger. The last thing I want to do is have a pity-party for myself. I am really blessed in spite of what's happening now; I have my family, my health, my friends and my faith, and I know that I am luckier than most people in the world. Nevertheless, these criminals have to be brought into the light, and maybe the more people who speak out about how these banking institutions who have brought us to this place are using the bailout money that we taxpayers have given them, the more pressure will be put on Congress to change things.

Here's my letter:

-----------------------------

Hi Blue Gal -

You may not have heard much from me lately; I haven't been blogging, or writing, or doing anything politically. This is because I have been spending every ounce of physical, mental and emotional energy I possess trying to keep our family afloat and save our house. We were the victims of a predatory loan from one of the most egregiously criminal offenders, IndyMac Bank. I have not wanted to go public with our situation; partly out of pride, partly out of the hope that we would be able to get the bank to work with us. But it looks like this is not going to happen, and I am out of options. We filed for emergency bankruptcy yesterday, to get 15 days' respite to make one more last-ditch effort, but the way that the bank bailout was set up, IndyMac has no incentive to work with us - they get money from the government immediately when they foreclose. They stand to gain nothing, short-term (which is all the balance sheets deal with), by keeping us in our house. So my only hope at this point is to try to make as big a stink as possible in the hopes that negative publicity would give them a reason to do the right thing. And if they want to take our house, by God they are going to have to break a sweat. We are not just going to roll over.

Here's the letter I wrote to explain our situation:

Dear -------

My husband and I are, at least for the next few days, California homeowners. Despite our best efforts, IndyMac Bank is preparing to sell the house that my husband purchased in 1983 on Monday, March 15.

This chain of events began when we refinanced our house in 2006. We are musicians by profession, and the unpredictability of our income has made it difficult to preserve a pristine credit score - although we are not always able to pay our bills exactly on time, we do pay them; nevertheless this negatively affects our credit score. Because of this, the loan we ended up with was a terrible one. We were told that if we made the payments on time on this overpriced loan for a year, at the end of that year we would be eligible for a more reasonable loan. This looked like a way to be able to improve our credit score and get the loan we wanted, so we agreed to it; even though a payment of $3500 a month (for our 2+1 house) was unsustainable and unaffordable, we figured it would be worth it if after a year we would get something we could afford.

Of course, the year goes by, we make every payment on time, and we are declined for another loan. Now we are struggling with a payment that we cannot possibly afford, and it makes all of our other bills more and more difficult to pay. Since 2006 we have been spiraling downward financially. When the Administration began its bank bailouts and loan modification programs, we hoped we would be eligible for this. About six months ago, our mortgage broker sent 65 pages of documents to IndyMac to begin negotiations, and never heard back from them. Then a couple of weeks ago we got a notice on the door that our house would be up for sale on Monday, March 15. They had simply ignored our broker and begun foreclosure proceedings.

Our broker sent them a RESPA request, and in speaking with IndyMac, they suggested 'a loan modification' to her. But they do not seem ready to work with us in good faith, and rather than trust to their honesty in negotiation, we have filed emergency bankruptcy proceedings to give us a couple of weeks to try to keep the house from being sold out from under us while they pretend to be negotiating. It does not seem to be in their interest to help us stay in the house; from my understanding they get money from the government when they do a foreclosure, and there is nothing to motivate them to work with us.

We are at the end of our rope. My husband is 62, I am 50 and our 3 kids at home are 11, 13, and 18. The idea of being out on the street at this point in our lives - and our kids lives - and losing the house that my husband has owned since 1983 is just shattering. We are not spendthrifts - we don't have credit-card debt; we don't have car payments; our debt (other than the house) is mainly stemming from our youngest child's eye surgery in 2008.

I don't know if there is anything that can be done or any place to turn, but if there is, we would greatly appreciate any assistance or advice.

Sincerely, Alicia Morgan

Anyway, I wish that I were not in this situation, and could be doing what I want to do - working to elect progressive candidates and writing about progressive values - but this, of course, is the result of these things that progressives have been fighting against, and that predatory capitalism and the unfettered implementation of Republican ideals - 'free' markets, deregulation, limited government oversight, 'what's good for Big Business is good for America' - have brought us to. But what's good for Big Business, while being very good indeed for Big Business, has proven disastrous for the rest of America.

(Update - how long has it been since I blogged? Long enough that the first iteration of this post did not contain the link to Blue Gal's blog! Love ya, Gal! Fixt.)

Happy New Year - My Resolution

2010-01-01T02:42:00.000-08:00

This is my New Year's resolution - to fight on and not let the magnitude of the task before us discourage me from working for what I know is right.

The End of the Decade

2009-12-30T11:42:00.000-08:00

Oh, my dear Lord, let's hope the next one is better.

The farther down this corporatist, military/industrialist, fundamentalist, predatory-capitalist right-wing path we go, the worse it gets.

It has gotten harder and harder for me to write over the last year or so, as my complete emotional and intellectual attention has been taken up by trying to stave off foreclosure and keep things together amid the collapse of our economy. And it's not just me and my family; so many people I know are going through the same thing. As independent musicians, who even in the best of times don't have a guaranteed income, we tend to be on the front lines of any kind of national financial setbacks - we're canaries in the coal mines. But it's not just people like us; it's the people who used to tell us to "get a real job" so as to have security who are going through the same thing. "Job security" means nothing any more, and people who have staked their emotional well-being on the fact that they have a steady job are in the same boat as we are.

And the worst of it is that so many people are feeling as if it's their fault - feeling ashamed and guilty for not having a job - when the fact is that we have been robbed. And we will continue to be stolen from as long as this predatory capitalism is allowed to go unchecked.

My fervent wish for the New Year, and the new decade, is a change of direction.

Much love and best wishes to you all, my blog friends.

On Thanksgiving - Thoughts on Charity

2009-11-26T13:01:00.000-08:00

It's Thanksgiving today. I am grateful that I have my health, my darling husband, my beloved kids, my wonderful friends who are like family to me. I am grateful that I will be eating a meal today with our big, fine family, and that there will be more than enough food for everyone. I am grateful that I have a roof over my head; a warm, safe place to sleep. I have a job; I have clean clothes. And it doesn't matter to 'whom' I am grateful - or if indeed it is 'anyone' at all; I am just grateful - counting my blessings makes me appreciate what I do have and keeps me from being unsatisfied because of what I don't have. It's an exercise in mental health for me.

Many of us are doing 'charitable' things on this day; gratitude for me - and for many others - involves giving to those who do not have these things that I include in my gratitude list. There are people that believe that government should not be in the business of helping those in need; that it should be taken care of through private charitable giving. Many of these same people, however, simultaneously feel that 'charity' should only go to people who meet their own specific criteria as to whether they are 'deserving' or not, and that the 'haves' ought to get to decide whether or not to help the 'have-nots'.

If you think deeper on this you will see that these particular 'haves' are acting as though they believe that the 'have-nots' are that way by choice. If this were indeed the case, then the 'haves' should have the right to choose whether or not they should offer their help. They pay lip service to the idea that the poor are deserving of help, but the reality is that they believe that 'laziness and poor choices' are the primary determining factors for poverty, and to help them is to reinforce and reward those factors by 'confiscating' from those who are not lazy and do not make poor choices. Those in need should be judged and punished by those who have more, or they will continue on their immoral path.

Yes, there are a small percentage of people who 'take advantage of the system', and even for those - is that such an enviable way of life, to receive the relatively small amount of assistance that public support entails? The ones to criticize are the ones who steal big; those people who really 'game the system' live in mansions and are lauded for their entrepreneurship. But most people (and more than ever in these difficult times) are in need due to no fault of their own, and it is our responsibility as a society to provide a safety net that includes help for a way out of poverty with dignity, not a punitive, finger-pointing, judgmental sort of 'charity' which is not charity at all but arrogance.

The difference is in the assumption that poverty is a choice. If indeed I choose not to work, not to take care of myself and my family, and you choose to work and are therefore successful, then you are indeed within your rights to decide whether or not to help me with your own resources, and to use your judgment to decide whether I am deserving of your charity. However, that is not very often the case - it is the exception, not the rule. You don't 'have' everything you have simply due to your own awesomeness, and as a society, we are better off as a whole if we help those who fall through the cracks. We help ourselves by helping the 'least of these', as the Prince of Peace knew very well.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

In Which I Finally Meet My First Reviewer, David Swanson!

2009-11-24T09:20:00.000-08:00

Last night, I attended a local event for David Swanson, who is currently touring with his new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, sponsored by Winograd for Congress 2010, Progressive Democrats of America, Code Pink, Westside Progressives & Ilene Proctor's Great Mind Series. Lila Garrett from KPFK's "Connect the Dots" and Marcy Winograd moderated, and it was a very illuminating and interesting evening. Swanson is one of the most informed, informative, thoughtful and active progressives I know, and his book reflects his years of work both inside and outside the Beltway, giving him a unique and valuable perspective.

His talk, while it touched on the major themes of his book, was not really about the book itself, but about what the book was written to address: namely, the necessity of finding a way to make the voice of the people more powerful through a re-examination and reorganization of our current broken system of government representation. The supposed 'three branches of government' which are meant to be a system of checks and balances, where each branch is held in check by the other two and no one branch is more powerful than the others, are badly askew. The executive branch, which was intended not to make law, but to execute law made by Congress, has morphed into a law unto itself, having taken for itself the right to write law through 'signing statements' changing laws written by Congress, or by simply making up its own laws by issuing 'executive orders'. We saw this happen most egregiously under the Bush Administration, but the larger problem that many of us saw coming has come to pass also - that this 'unitary executive' power would extend to subsequent Presidents, who would have no incentive to let go of that power. We are already seeing evidence of this in the Obama Administration.

Along with the enhanced power of the executive, we also have a Congress which is unable to really represent the people, due to the way that the House and the Senate are currently set up. The allotment of members of the House of Representatives for each state has not been changed in many years, even though the population of these states has ballooned far beyond any one House member's ability to truly represent the people of their district. For example, CA-36 currently has about 700,000 constituents with one person to represent them. It is unrealistic, given the increase in population from when the districts were drawn up and Representatives allotted, to expect one Congressperson to be able to properly advocate for that many citizens. Swanson suggests increasing the House and doing away with the Senate altogether, and perhaps having a large citizen-based advocacy group in each state. I don't know enough about the mechanics of that to argue for or against that idea, but Swanson, with his hands-on experience and knowledge of the inner workings of our government, has taken on the big solutions, and I applaud him for that.

It was a remarkable evening, and I was so glad to get to meet David Swanson in person at last, as well as seeing Marcy Winograd - who is forging ahead with a strong progressive campaign to unseat Jane Harman in 2010 - my hero Vincent Bugliosi, and my friend Bree Walker, who will soon be back on the airwaves with her powerful progressive voice.

"We the People" need to speak out more than ever. Our work is only starting, and David Swanson made the point that I have been talking about for a while now - that we may not see the change we want in our own lifetimes, but most important social change is like that. The abolition of slavery, the Civil Rights movement, womens' suffrage, workers' rights and the union movement, and American independence itself, came about through several generations of work with no guarantee of success, and we must work as hard as that for our progressive values.

A Lovely Tea Party

2009-11-08T01:15:00.000-08:00

Mad As Hell

2009-11-07T23:21:00.000-08:00

Will fight health care with every fiber of his being, and the last gasp of his oxygen tank...

In Which I Travel To Our Nation's Capital and Attend a Lovely Tea-Party

2009-11-07T13:40:00.000-08:00

The timing could not have been more fortuitous.

I am, once again, here in Washington, DC with Americans United for Separation of Church and State - along with many of my favorite bloggers - for their annual conference. The West Coasters got in a day early, and I managed to do 3 live music broadcasts yesterday and got a good night's sleep in preparation for the festivities tonight.

Little did I know what riches would be in store for me today!

As I strolled along this morning, sightseeing around Capitol Hill, I spied a colorfully-clad man reading a speech to an interested gaggle of three or four people. His young son held up a yellow "Don't Tread On Me" flag. He informed us that they were voting on the health-care bill today and to be sure to come back at one o'clock for the big rally.

I had heard that the teabaggers were planning another rally to stop government takeover of health care, but I didn't know that they would be having it while I was here. It was almost as if they had planned it especially for me!

So, after enjoying a visit to the Folger Shakespeare Museum, we ambled on over back to the Capitol, where the promised party was in full swing! I could hear the dulcet tones of the one and only Michele Bachmann braying across the lawn, where ~~around 250~~ millions of outraged Americans were raising their voices in opposition to the stealing of their freedoms.

Naturally, I was agog. Being a total fangirl of the amazing Bachmann, I was simply beside myself with joy at seeing her in person. But - my thrills were about to be compounded, because who did La Bachmann introduce but the legendary firebrand, über-patriot Jean Schmidt!!!

Yes, you read that right. What a bonanza! Double the pleasure, double the fun!

Stay tuned for more teabaggery later - I'm on my way to meet up with my fellow bloggers down at the hotel lounge!

Marcy Winograd on Big Pharma and Patent Medicine

2009-11-01T23:32:00.000-08:00

Marcy Winograd has an excellent diary up at Daily Kos (please read/recommend if you're so inclined!) regarding the pharmaceutical industry's stranglehold on patents for "biologics" - cutting-edge, life-saving drugs. The new health care bill includes an amendment by Representatives Anna Eshoo and Joe Barton which will grant 12 years of patent protection for these biologics. Marcy writes:

While it’s clear, as Rep. Eshoo points out in her counter-blog, that the Eshoo amendment, limits for the first time patent protection for exorbitant cancer and HIV drugs, it’s also true that a minimum 12-year monopoly that allows Roche-Genentech to charge cancer patients with breast or brain tumors $185,000 per year for Avastin or Abbot Labs to suddenly increase its prices five-fold for Norvir, a key ingredient in the AIDS-HIV cocktail, constitutes an excessive stranglehold on access to medicine desperately needed, not only here but worldwide where AIDS leaves a trail of tears throughout Africa.

CALPERS, California’s 1.4 million employee pension plan, and AARP, the senior insurance group, both opposed the 12-year protection as unsustainable.
Congressman Waxman (D-Santa Monica), Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee wanted a five-year patent; President Obama supported a seven-year compromise exclusivity on biologics.

"Many members are looking for so-called game changers that would bring more competition and lower costs" in the health-care sector, said Mr. Waxman. "But if we do what the drug companies want and add on long periods of monopoly protection...we will not only lose that opportunity, but guarantee higher drug prices for the foreseeable future."

Jane Hamsher notes that:

because of an "evergreening" clause that grants drug companies a continued monopoly if they make slight changes to the drug (like creating a once-a-day dose where the original product was three times per day), they will never become generics. Instead of the Waxman-Deal amendment that granted much more reasonable terms to biologic patent holders, Speaker Pelosi chose to include the Eshoo-Barton amendment. And we could all be paying for that choice for the rest of our lives.

When you couple this with the fact that most insurance companies will not pay for name brands, only for generics, you see what a Catch-22 this is for the average patient, who is in desperate need of these drugs but cannot afford the cost of the name brand, which can be hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Marcy writes:

The real question on biologics, however, reflects deeper issues also mirrored in the single-payer debate. Just as single-payer advocates object to for-profit insurance companies whose first responsibility is a fiduciary one, to make money for shareholders, health care activists who challenge Big Pharma question whether for-profit corporations, often reliant on partnership money from the taxpayer-supported National Institute of Health, should be allowed to own the rights to life-saving medicine now out of reach to some 90-million Americans who are uninsured or under-insured, millions more whose insurance companies refuse to cover the costs, as well as much of the Third World living in poverty.

Selling medicine is not like selling cars or dish washers. If you can’t buy a car, you can take a bus. If you can’t buy a dishwasher, you can pick up a rag. If you can’t buy Norvir, you can suffer with night sweats until you waste away.

No one should own the right to someone else’s life.

I think it's really, really important to, as Marcy says, shine a spotlight on what's happening with Big Pharma, and especially the patent issue.

Yes, they spend money on research. But the building blocks that they use to develop their drugs have been mostly put into place via public funding - NIH and university research. They don't 'invent' drugs out of thin air, from scratch - they use existing research to work from.

I think Marcy is spot on on this issue. It's not a matter of holding up a bill because it's not perfect - it's a matter of raising awareness about how the pharmaceutical industries work, and which politicians are benefiting from their largesse. When insurance companies will not pay for a life-saving name-brand drug but only a generic, it is imperative to find a way to make these drugs available and affordable to those who need them to survive and cannot afford literally millions of dollars in drug costs. Unless these companies developed these drugs completely from scratch, using no one's research or money but their own - and they don't; they certainly benefit from taxpayer money, both past and present - I think that entails a certain obligation to these taxpayers.

That is why I believe that in matters of life and death - which is what health care is - that the purely 'for-profit' corporate model, which is solely responsible to its shareholders and not to the public, is not appropriate. As Marcy pointed out, it's not like selling cars or dishwashers. We need to realize that there is a difference between health care and dishwashers, and treat them differently in the public sphere, as do other industrialized nations.

Marcy Winograd is challenging Blue Dog corporate Democrat Jane Harman in the June 8, 2010 Democratic Party primary. In 2006, when Winograd jumped into the race just three months before the primary, she mobilized almost 38% of the vote.

To donate to Marcy's progressive challenge, visit Winograd4Congress.com.

A 'Must-Read' Synopsis of the Impact of Predatory Capitalism

2009-10-13T03:40:00.000-07:00

I seldom just link to articles, but this one by William K. Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One puts it so clearly and succinctly that there's nothing for me to add.

From the excellent website New Deal 2.0:

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster William K. Black explains how the finance economy preys on the real economy instead of serving it. He shows how both have become dysfunctional and warns that we must not neglect the real economy — the source of our jobs, our incomes, and the creator of goods and services — as we focus on financial reform.

Read, please.

The Democratic Achilles' Heel - A Tale of Two Worldviews

2009-10-02T19:11:00.000-07:00

From the Onion on Facebook -

BREAKING: Democrats Hoping To Take Control Of Congress From Republican Minority In 2010

What up, Dems?

Setting aside the fact that many Dems (particularly Blue Dogs) have been lobbied hard enough (and contributed to highly enough) by the insurance, for-profit health and pharmaceutical industries that they are not in a position to challenge them, but are merely attempting to placate them without threatening their right to continued dominance and profiteering, the fact remains that the Democrats' Achilles' heel is their tendency to seek accord and common ground (or 'bipartisan support') when their opponents have no such intention.

If you look at it from a framing perspective, the 'nurturant parent' model upon which progressives tend to base their worldview values consensus as the way to make decisions, not hierarchy and authority. And, while not perfect by any means, this is basically our approach as a nation - democracy, I think it's called.

This is our strength and it is also our weakness, because Republicans, as a conservative body, tend towards an authoritarian, winner-take-all approach which seeks to dominate rather than compromise. Democrats reach out across the aisle because they believe that everyone is entitled to have their input considered - and they also believe that if they give, they'll get. This is in contrast to Republicans, who have shown time and time again that they regard that sort of thing as weakness, and respond to bipartisan overtures with even more aggressive refusal to budge. This they see as 'standing on principle'.

I see each worldview as having two components - the left/liberal worldview composed of the 'nurturant parent' frame and the 'hunter' social aspect, and the right/conservative worldview consisting of the 'strict father' frame and the 'farmer' social aspect. I don't see the two components as contradictions but as the 'leader/follower' or 'hard/soft' sides of each worldview. (And, as I always qualify when talking about this, real human beings have attributes of both left and right; but for most people, one or the other aspect tends to take precedence when it comes to choosing a political viewpoint.)

On the left model, the 'nurturant parent' view of how to run a society is formed by the 'hunter' social aspect, or, to be more specific, the hunter/gatherer social aspect, which was how society was arranged before we developed an agricultural society. This society tended to be governed by consensus rather than top-down authority; there were nominal 'leaders' but they did not 'rule' in an authoritarian fashion. The governing style was 'soft' rather than 'hard', but there was more individual autonomy within the society, and the 'hard' aspect came from the necessity for individuals to be risk-takers and aggressive in order to survive as hunters and feed their people as well as defend themselves from predatory or dangerous animals. A hunter/gatherer society was also communal and relatively non-acquisitive, as food could not be stored but must be consumed as it was killed or found, and one animal was no use to hoard, since it could not be eaten entirely by one person nor 'saved for later'. Since many hunter/gatherer societies were nomadic, the idea of ownership was rather vague, and did not require a harsh authority to control and protect property.

On the right model, the 'strict father' view is derived from the need for an agricultural society to operate along very specific lines. There is no 'wiggle room' with planting and harvesting; it must be done exactly so, and to deviate in any way will mean starvation. These rules are imposed by nature rather than other humans or animals; thus it cannot be argued or negotiated with, but must be accepted - the penalty for disobedience is death - starvation. This requires a kind of unquestioning obedience that was not as important to a hunter society. It was the advent of agriculture which also brought with it the necessity for ownership and property - to grow food, you must possess land to grow it on, and make a long-term commitment. Being attached to a certain piece of land brought with it the necessity to defend it, not just from animals or the elements, but other humans. These factors brought about an authoritarian mindset as a means of survival - the combination of obedience and dominance in a hierarchical setting. So while the 'soft' aspect of the society presents as obedience to authority, the 'hard' aspect is the governing authority which is a black-and-white, win-or-lose idea, where the idea of authority emanates from its position rather than its function. Authority for authority's sake is the overriding principle, so logic and reason are not as important as obedience.

This is why the contradictions and hypocrisies of the Republican approach don't bother them at all, because the facts are not the issue; the obedience to those in charge of the viewpoint is what matters. I would say 'party' but it isn't so much the Republican Party itself as those who present themselves as the kind of right-wing authoritarian leaders that authoritarian followers accept and are drawn to. Some are within the party leadership, and some are not, such as the hate-mongers like Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck. Not just anyone in a position of leadership can reach real authoritarian followers - obviously, they do not accept the President of the United States as their leader! Actually, they thrive on those contradictions and hypocrisies, because that means that they are even more obedient if they obey in the face of those glaring inconsistencies - and the more obedient they are, the more secure they feel.

Two hallmarks of the conservative mindset are resistance to change and acceptance of inequality. We see both of these traits from the Republican side in the healthcare debate. But - not all conservatives are authoritarians, and not all authoritarians are conservatives! What we are hearing from mostly right now is the rabid authoritarians - the followers, the leaders, and what Dr. Robert Altemeyer calls the 'double-highs' - those who score high for both authoritarianism and social domination. Dr. Altemeyer's definition of the authoritarian personality is one who exhibits:

1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in
their society;
2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and
3) a high level of conventionalism.

There are conservatives who do not exhibit the authoritarian aspect, but they are increasingly being marginalized as not 'ideologically in step', and the Republican Party is controlled for the most part by authoritarian conservatives. This works out well for the real 'powers that be', the corporatocracy, because resistance to change works in their favor, since they are currently in charge, and acceptance of inequality works in their favor as well - for obvious reasons.

So we see that most of the rhetoric coming from the Republicans is from the authoritarians - those who unquestioningly follow the directives of their accepted leaders, and who are aggressively hostile to those people and ideas to whom their leaders object.

Conservatives and liberals can have a dialogue. Authoritarians and liberals cannot.

And this is why Dems get their asses handed to them on a regular basis - even when they are in power! Because they cannot find it within themselves to change the tactics they are used to, and keep treating the Republicans as though they are seeking the same things - consensus instead of domination. When a Dem with cojones enough to stand up to these thugs comes along, like Alan Grayson, they practically pee all over themselves.

Democrats (at least, those who aren't enmeshed in the sticky webs of the Washington insider/lobbyist culture, unable to move) need to get in touch with the 'hard' aspect of their worldview - the individualistic, risk-taking, 'hunter' side of their natures - or we will continue to have an aggressive, reality-challenged minority dictating its destructive will to the rest of the country. Dems - the Republicans as they stand today are never going to budge, and and the more you roll over and give away the store in hopes that they will respond in kind, the more they are going to take without giving anything in return, and the more they will disrespect you as weak and unprincipled.

Seeking common ground and compromise only works when both parties are on board. It's already been tried, and tried, and tried again, with the same results. Time to put your big-boy boots on, Achilles. Is Alan Grayson the only Dem who knows that the only way to deal with a Republican bully is to stand up to him?

Update - Melanie has a post with some thoughts on the same subject - very interesting.

Can We Clone Alan Grayson?

2009-10-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

I'm going to toot my own horn just the littlest bit; I chatted online with - and sent money to - Alan Grayson back in January of 08 at Firedoglake when he was running for office. He now represents my former home of Orlando, where I lived for 4 years and still have very close friendship and family ties, and I can be proud that BlueAmerica supported a fighter like Alan Grayson.

Dems, listen up - this is how it's done.

Something To Think About - Where Does All That Lobbying Money Come From?

2009-09-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

Well, we know that the incessant inundation of our congresspeople with torrents of lobbying money has hamstrung any attempts to get a 'robust public option' into the dialogue, much less single-payer, which is what would really make the difference in giving every American access to decent, affordable health care.

But let's take this question a bit further.

Let's see...

What do insurance companies do?

One definition is "pooling the resources of a large group to pay for the losses of a small group." In health care terms, this would involve taking money (premiums) from a large group of people, and paying the medical bills (losses) of a small group of people - that is, people who are ill, which are a smaller sub-group within any given group of people - with that money. The insurance company makes determinations about how much money they will need to cover these medical expenses by calculating the odds that a certain percentage of people are going to have medical expenses at any given time, and that furthermore, they estimate which of those people will be more likely to need medical care by calculating age range, medical histories and other criteria, and charge premiums according to who is most likely to need care. The larger and more diverse the pool of customers, the lower the overall cost of covering these losses.

Every business has income and expenses, and hopefully, profit.

For insurance companies, the expenses are:

the medical bills they pay on behalf of their customers
employees' salaries
building and infrastructure overhead
administrative costs

(I'm sure I've left out plenty, but this is a very broad overview)

And their income?

customer premiums

Out of the customer premiums, all these business expenses need to be paid - including whatever is left over, which goes to profit for the shareholders of the company.

So - what you and I pay to the insurance company is the only income they have. Everything else is outgo.

Oh, gosh - it seems I've left out an expense!

I forgot about - lobbying!

Yes - your insanely high health insurance premium is what the insurance company lobbyists use to donate to your congressperson's campaign fund, to get their ear and convince them to vote against a public option and to not even consider single-payer!

That is where all that lobbying money comes from! You and me.

While they're taking our money to deny us care, they use our money to insure that nothing changes! All those billions of lobby dollars did not come from anywhere else but our pockets - and they're being used against us to literally destroy our lives if we should be so unlucky as to fall ill - while paying an enormous percentage of our income to these same insurance companies. The money that could be used to pay our medical bills so we don't lose our homes and go bankrupt instead goes to persuade Congress to allow them to keep stealing from us to give their CEOs multi-million-dollar salaries and a fat return for their shareholders.

It's the same way with the credit card companies - they get the money they use to influence Congress into screwing us over directly out of our pockets.

And an insurance bill without a public option is merely forcing all Americans to buy insurance, whether they can afford it or not - what a gift for the insurance companies! Millions of new customers to fleece! And bought and paid for, as usual, by you and me.

We're not rocket scientists here at Hooterville, but we can put 2 and 2 together.

Just something to think about.

Hooterville's AU Church-State Issue of the Week

2009-09-24T11:27:00.000-07:00

Every time I try to institute something "of the week" on this poor blog, it never gets very far. My ADD sees to that. Consistency? I think not!

Nevertheless, since I am on the executive board of my local chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and have been involved with this fine organization for the last 3 years or so, I'm going to attempt a regular feature of a church-state issue here. To me, the church-state question encompasses so many different aspects of what I believe as a progressive that I think it's important to keep on top of it, and to see where the attempts by the right to blur (and eventually erase) the line really lead to.

As I have written about in my book, the rise of the Right as far as power is concerned has happened because of the alliance of the religious fundmentalist right and the big business right. Neither of these groups by themselves is powerful enough to be able to thwart the will of the rest of America, which considered itself fairly liberal (not hard-left, mind you, but liberal) until after the sixties, when a group of über-wealthy Republicans, fearing the loss of their power structure and 'free enterprise', got together and formulated a long-term, highly-organized and well-funded plan to stamp out liberalism. Richmond lawyer (and future Supreme Court justice) Lewis Powell wrote a memo to the Chairman of the Education Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which outlined the necessity of halting the influence of the Left, lest the whole free-enterprise system collapse, and soon after, as Lewis Lapham writes in Harper's, the machine was set in motion.

As the Big Business conservatives planned their comeback, Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, had a plan of his own. Outraged by the Supreme Court decision in 1964 that removed prayer from public schools, Weyrich wanted to hitch the evangelical Christian wagon to the Republican Party star. The problem was, at the time, neither side had an interest in the other. The Republican Party was, first and foremost, business-oriented, with no interest in challenging church-state separation. The evangelical community had largely separated itself from public life after the Scopes Monkey Trial; although William Jennings Bryan prevailed against celebrity trial lawyer Clarence Darrow and obtained a conviction against John Scopes for teaching evolution in school, evangelicals took a pounding in the press and were labeled 'ignorant' and 'backward'. In response, they retreated from the public sphere, and chose not to engage in 'worldly' activities, forming their own communities apart from the mainstream.

Weyrich was convinced that these two groups had common interests, and worked to unite them, but was not successful until 1978, when the IRS threatened to revoke tax-exempt status for private schools that were not sufficiently integrated. At this point, evangelicals suddenly saw that Big Government was the enemy, and that the Republican Party could be their ally in their fight against it.

This, basically, is an overview of how the religious right and big-business right combined their assets - big money and big obedient voter bloc - to wrest control of the public debate to their side, although they were numerically and ideologically in the minority. The evangelical vote pushed 'anti-government' Reagan into the presidency over the evangelical Jimmy Carter, whose liberal social views disappointed those who thought one of their own would uphold fundamentalist ideals; and the dismantling of the New Deal, which had rescued America from the Great Depression and given the country unprecedented prosperity and a strong middle class, began in earnest.

Neither side - Big Business or evangelical right - holds the mainstream view of America, but together they have proved a powerful juggernaut that will take an equally motivated and dedicated opposition to halt. My goal is to inform and engage the progressively-minded segment of America that is not aware of this - and there are a lot of people who fall into that category. This is why I work with church-state issues; because this is the way that the Big Business wing persuades the fundamentalist wing to support, with their massive and loyal voting bloc, public policies that actively hurt this country and the principles of democracy that our nation was founded on. This is the carrot; the motivator that the corporatists dangle in front of the fundies to keep them in line. Issues such as teaching creationism in schools, school vouchers, hot-button issues like abortion and gay marriage, and generally inducing taxpayers to support religion with tax dollars, while attempting to dismantle public education and public services in favor of privatization, keep the evangelicals engaged and supportive of Big Business policies. The aims of Big Business, however, have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with obtaining and controlling as much of the public purse and power as they can get their hands on, for their own benefit, and the subsequent detriment of the rest of the country.

They use the buzz-word 'Freedom' - to the fundies it means the freedom to impose their religious views legally on the rest of the country, without allowing anyone else the freedom to do the same to them; to the corporatists it means the freedom to prey financially on the rest of the country without regulation - the only regulations they care for are those which keep the rest of us from protecting ourselves from these predators. You can't blame them for being predators any more than you can blame a lion for being a predator - it is their nature. They are incorporated to make profit, not to protect the interests of the people. That is government's job, and the reason we have a government at all.

My first Issue of the Week is judicial ruling on church-state separation. Rob Boston, Assistant Director of Communications of AU, gives us Justice Antonin Scalia's take on it. No surprise here - he doesn't believe in it; doesn't think it is constitutional. Scalia thinks public schools should be allowed to teach "creation science" - an oxymoron if there ever was one. We have seen specifically where the danger lies here, during the Bush Administration, where 'differing views' on science on the subject of climate change, instead of one scientific standard, led the Administration to "suppression of scientific evidence that does not support administration plans."

When science is legally reduced to 'some guy's opinion', while individual views on morality are considered 'moral relativism' which should be eschewed in favor of one particular unyielding Christian standard as if it were scientific fact, then we are headed down a dangerous road indeed.

For more on AU's fight to keep Church and State separate, as it is in the Constitution, please check out their site at au.org.

Review of "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" – by David Swanson

2009-09-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union – by David Swanson

I want to live in David Swanson’s America.

David Swanson is an activist’s activist; I first became aware of him through the organization he co-founded, AfterDowningStreet.org. On May 3rd, 2005, through a link on Raw Story , I read about the Downing Street minutes, a recording of a meeting chaired by Tony Blair in which it was revealed that (as Rep. John Conyers wrote) “[the] British government and the United States government had secretly agreed to attack Iraq in 2002, before authorization was sought for such an attack in Congress, and had discussed creating pretextual justifications for doing so." I was just stunned, and even more stunned by the deafening silence from the mainstream media. Swanson and his co-founders were on it like white on rice, and I joined the group and bookmarked AfterDowningStreet.org as the ‘go-to’ website for information on the efforts to bring this into the light of day.

He has worked within politics, within peace groups, within labor groups, within communications groups, and his involvement in –and knowledge about – such a broad range of progressive issues and his hand-on experience with the inside workings of government and politics gives him a unique perspective on what is really going on in America; and, what’s more – what can and ought to be done to make it better.

I was thrilled to have David Swanson be the first person to review my book The Price of Right, and while it was not uniformly glowing I thought it was fair, made good points deserving of consideration and in general positive rather than negative, which is what one would hope for in a review, and I was glad to have it. One of his main criticisms was that, while I pointed out problems within our system, I did not present ideas for solutions to those problems.

When he was kind enough to send me his own book, Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, to read and review, I saw why.

This book is sweeping in scope, and not only articulates the problems but nuts-and-bolts approaches to solutions to these problems from a progressive point of view. Swanson’s premise is that it is not a bad President or a corrupt party in power that is the root of our current trouble in America, but the imbalance between the so-called ‘three branches of government’, with an all-powerful, ‘imperial’ executive branch and a defanged, ineffective legislative branch, that has made the voice of the people unable to be heard.

Step by step, he outlines how the power grab by the executive branch during the Bush-Cheney regime has endangered, not only our present situation, but our future. The unprecedented powers that Bush and Cheney claimed for themselves – lying to Congress, starting a war of aggression based on those lies, ignoring the Geneva Conventions and habeas corpus, torture, illegal wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, abuse of the Justice Department – the list is so extensive as to be almost unbelievable; yet they have gotten away with all this and more; and they have yet to be so much as frowned at for these crimes – Congress (and the new President) seem to prefer to act like none of this ever happened, and want to ‘look forward rather than backward’. The reason that Cheney, Bush, et al. must be held accountable, Swanson asserts, is not, however, for revenge or retribution, which will not bring back one soldier or innocent civilian, but a far more important reason – to prevent future administrations from seizing those powers for their own use.

As much as the former administration abused the office, they could not have done so without the acquiescence of Congress, and this is what Swanson sees as a main point of his book. It is Congress that is the vox populi, and Congress which must stand its ground for the people if the American experiment is to succeed.

In this book, he clearly articulates, in very specific detail, not only what progressive values entail, but how they can be implemented. It is a radical approach, to be sure, and it’s difficult to imagine that these gigantic changes could happen in today’s climate of liberal timidity and conservative aggression. Some of these ideas are already on the progressive agenda – campaign finance reform, cutting the military budget, election protection, etc. However, Swanson goes further and dares to suggest solutions even many progressives would shy away from proposing - enlarging the House and eliminating the Senate, eliminating the electoral college, enlarging the Supreme Court and lessening its power, and tosses around other ideas requiring Constitutional amendments. As radical as these ideas may be, they are not idly thrown out – they are carefully researched and thought through. He carries progressive ideals to their logical conclusion, and it is only because we have gone so far in the opposite direction – towards corporatism and away from democracy, towards empire and away from a republic – that they seem so startling.

Swanson is more than an idealist – he has a firm direction and vision that he outlines in Daybreak, and has a history of successful and practical action working within the system as well as outside it. But, what is most important in my opinion, is that he works and fights for what he believes in, regardless of its chances of immediate success – and Daybreak is a practical handbook for change; the kind of change that is brought about by people who work towards their aim in the face of daunting opposition. Swanson is no stranger to that path, and this book is a call to those who are ready, with him, to ignore the ‘conventional wisdom’ and the naysayers, take on the big fight, and work for, not spare change, but real transformation – towards a ‘more perfect Union’.

Buy your copy of Daybreak here.

Illegals, Watch Out - We're Taking Back Our Jobs!

2009-09-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

There's a new movement afoot in the American Right. Inspired by the rabidly anti-immigration, tirelessly pro-American-worker Lou Dobbs, it's springing up all across America. From the meatpacking plants of Iowa to the dairy farms of Arizona, from the kitchens of New York's finest restaurants to the Salad Bowl of California's Salinas Valley, in hotels, motels, and Holiday Inns all across this great nation of ours, the patriotic men and women who for years have stood by and watched illegal immigrants swarming across the border to brazenly steal their jobs have had enough.

Formerly known as the Minute-Man Movement (or 'Beer Guts Across America'), whose aim was to merely monitor the flow of illegal immigration across the border between the U.S. and Mexico, the troubled group disbanded amid infighting and accusations of internal corruption and financial misconduct in 2007. Yet, the dissatisfaction and frustration felt by these hard-working American patriots has only grown more intense, as they watch job after job after job go to those with no legal right to that job, while they themselves, deserving natural-born citizens, sit at home on their couches, with an ice-cold Coors, a family-sized bag of Chee-tos and a clicker in their hands as they wait around for the job that never seems to materialize.

Well, the time for waiting is over.

The time for action has arrived.

Illegal criminals, take notice - Conservative Americans are taking back their jobs!

Yes, from the ashes of the failed Minute-Man Movement, the Gimme Back My Job, Dammit Coalition (GBMJ,DC) has risen, and it has spread like wildfire among conservatives sick and tired of illegals taking the jobs from deserving American citizens. No longer content to wait for the government to do it for them, these patriots have taken matters into their own hands. Now they're doing more than just protesting or watching from the sidelines - they're taking back their Constitutional, God-given right to a job. Suddenly, you see them everywhere - on the sidewalk with a leaf-blower strapped to their back, in the parking lot of your favorite restaurant with the keys to your car or inside, balancing a heavy-laden bus tray full of dirty dishes as they adroitly refill your iced tea glass on their way back to the kitchen. You may find them bent over in a lettuce field under a blistering sun with a rake in their hand, or endangering their limbs with casually-maintained but lethally sharp meat-cutting machinery for fourteen hours or more a day while earning somewhere around three dollars an hour, with no benefits, medical insurance, workman's compensation, or even bathroom breaks.

Most of them say they've never been happier.

"For the first time in my life, I feel needed," says Coalition member Chuck B. Liggett, 70, a former accountant who now works in a chicken-packing plant in Amarillo, Texas. "When the floor boss screams at me for slowing down, I feel a surge of pride because what I do actually matters. Now, I do an honest day's work for my pay, and by the time I collapse on my filthy mattress on the floor of my stinking room at the end of my fifteen-hour shift, I know I really earned that forty dollars!"

And it's not only men who are flocking to this bold new movement. Conservative women are finding satisfaction, fulfillment and a sense of what it feels like to be a real American as they embrace this exciting, energetic new way of life. Darlene Simmons, 47, works in a factory in downtown Los Angeles, sewing elastic bands into men's underwear seven days a week.

"It works out great, because working seven days means that I can save the expense of a car and an apartment - not that I could afford them on my salary," she explains. "I just fall asleep sitting at my sewing machine, and when I wake up, I'm right there ready for another day of rewarding, eye-straining, repetitive-stress-injury-inducing work!"

The jobs bonanza has been beneficial for Darlene's whole family as well.

"We're going back to the good old-fashioned American work ethic that made this country great!" says Darlene. "My kids used to be spoiled, lazy, smart-mouthed and never satisfied. No matter how much stuff we bought them, it was never enough. Now my kids work in the factory right along with me! Even my seven-year-old daughter can sew a button on a fly with those itty-bitty hands of hers - she's pretty handy, considering how she was always so busy texting her little friends! And you'd better believe there's no more complaining - you should see them cry with happiness for a little half-cup of water!"

Not even Darlene's aged, infirm 94-years-young grandmother has to miss out on the fun - when she was fired from the factory for sewing her hand to a pair of extra-large briefs, she quickly found work again as a housemaid to the factory owner's wife. With tears in her eyes, choked up and unable to speak for gratitude, Grammaw merely trembled with joy, as Darlene quickly interjected, "They're so good to us here!"

Conservatives are done with talking - now they're stepping up to the plate and claiming what's theirs. All those cushy jobs that the illegal immigrants have been stealing are now back in the rightful hands of natural citizens like Chuck and Darlene. Unemployment? These stalwarts don't know the meaning of the word.

As a wise American patriot once said, "How uniquely American."

Just Imagine the Response...

2009-09-11T01:50:00.000-07:00

...if a Democrat had yelled out "You lie!" during a George W. Bush speech before Congress.

Just think about it.

Health Care, Corporate Personhood, Campaign Finance - the Unholy Trinity

2009-09-09T09:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes, I know that there's "no way we can get the public option in there, much less single payer." We are up against, not the ridiculous tea-baggers and right-wing fundie nutballs, but the mightiest corporations in the land - and in the world. Make no mistake - this is no 'grass-roots uprising by the little people' - this is a massively funded Astro-turf operation, financed by the limitless coffers of the corporations who have made that money off of the backs of the sick and the poor. and they are not about to watch their cash cow just wander out of the pasture.

As we have seen by the lackluster efforts of the Democrats in Congress and even the President, this is not only a Republican issue (except for the fact that those corporations favor Republicans, which is traditionally and proudly the party of Big Business) - everyone in Congress has been paid scads and scads to grant these corporations a favorable ear. And until we find a way to get that kind of money out of Congress - the kind of money that is being called "First Amendment Free Speech Rights" by the insurance corporations, drug corporations, and health-management-for-profit organizations, and "bribery" by anyone else with a brain cell rolling around in their head - we will not be able to allow the people's voice to be heard - and the American people want health care!

Health care that will not send you to the poorhouse after a single catastrophic illness.

Health care that will not be doled out to you by people who stand to lose money by giving it to you, and stand to make money by denying it to you.

Health care that will lower overall costs by allowing everyone preventive care and practical treatment that keeps them from getting so sick before they get care that they end up in the emergency room, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for something that could have been taken care of earlier for 50-100 dollars.

Health care that will that will help us all stay healthier and therefore more productive, taking less sick days.

Health care that will save us all money by keeping families out of bankruptcy and destitution, and off of the public welfare rolls, beause of an illness.

Lisa over at That's Why has a great post on health care and why there's no real debate - check it out!

Insurance has its place - for cosmetic or elective surgery, perhaps; for boutique care. If some rich yahoo wants a fancy hospital suite to get their facelifts and boob jobs in, by all means - get insurance for that! Pet insurance - sure! Pet medical care is expensive, and if we have pets, we want them to have good care and can pool our risk for that. I am consdering that myself, if I can get to where I can afford it. Insure your house, your car, your valuables. That's free-market.

But not profit-making off of life and death.

Every other civilized nation in the world makes it illegal to sell for-profit insurance for primary, necessary care. There are places (Switzerland, I think) that allow private insurance but it must be not-for-profit.

We cannot allow the necessities of life to become hostage to a private, for-profit model that is accountable not to the people, but to its shareholders only. Water, electricity, clean and breathable air, infrastructure (including basic communication) - these are things that fall under the category of 'life' in the phrase 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'. Freedom does not mean freedom to monopolize and steal. That original phrase was going to be 'life, liberty and property', and it was rightly changed.

'Government' is not a dirty word - unless you make it one!

So, to really be able to attack this problem in a way that we can win, there are two thing that we must look at - corporate personhood and campaign finance.

'Corporate personhood' was bought and paid for in the 1880s. Before then, there were restrictions by the states on how corporations could operate, and they could be dissolved by their state if they broke those laws. Of course, that was incredibly grating to the corporations, and they began lawyering up and devising legal strategies for many years before, waiting for just the right case and right justices to make a case for corporate personhood, which arrived in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886.

Once that was established (using the Fourteenth Amendment - same amendment that installed George W. Bush in the White House without being elected), corporations were not 'artificial legal constructs', like churches, unions, unincorporated businesses, civic clubs, and even governments. Corporations had the same rights as human beings - including freedom of speech - with none of the attendant vulnerabilities. They have an infinite 'lifespan'; no medical needs; no need for food, water or air; no families to protect and provide for. They can dissolve and re-form at any time. In a legal battle between a person and a corporation, the corporation can simply stall until that person dies. There is no way to have a fair contest between a person and a corporation - yet we are to consider them on the same legal footing as human beings?

This misguided judgment has set the tone for the declining quality of life for human beings as a whole, and a concentration of power, wealth and comfort to those few humans who reap the benefits of association with big corporations. And one of the biggest scams they have going is the 'health insurance' scam. And since a corporation's only obligation is to its bottom line - by law - the real-life-human-being effects of its money-making model do not figure into its calculations.

It can't.

We must understand that if a corporation were to put human well-being before profit, it would be breaking the law - violating the legal conditions of its obligations to its stockholders. It's not wrong to put profits first for a for-profit corporation.

What is wrong is placing the life and death of human beings into the hands of a for-profit corporation.

The government, on the other hand, was specifically designed to put the welfare of 'we the people' first. And the government is also accountable to us, unlike a corporation. That is why these life-and-death issues need to be in the hands of 'we the people'.

No, the government is not perfect. Yes, there are many things that could and should be changed to ensure accountability - but as citizens we do have that power. With corporations we do not. And do not give me that hoo-haw about 'competition and free market and the consumer making the choice and influencing the corporation that way'. That is malarkey and everyone knows it - even those who spout it like the Holy Gospel.

Which brings me to the next point about campaign finance.

As long as politicians are dependent upon huge sums of money to get elected and stay in office, almost half their time is involved in fundraising. And the massive amounts of money necessary to buy the television ads and other costs of campaigning are only available in three ways: one's own money - in which case you are merely purchasing an election; small donations from individuals - which is like trying to build a sand castle one grain of sand at a time; and corporate donations. Each one comes with a cost that does not belong in public elections and the running of our country to the benefit of all, not the privileged few.

And the cost of corporate donations, of course, is an obligation to give that donor your ear. The response to that is always. "I only listen; just like I'd listen to any citizen - that doesn't mean that I will legislate the way the corporations want me to."

Bull. Shit. On a stick.

The pressure to deliver is tremendous. Corporate donations include both a carrot and a stick. The carrot is, of course, the big donations, which frees up the time that a congressperson has to spend fundraising, and ostensibly 'tend to the people's business'.

But there is also the stick, that rarely gets spoken about on TV and the media.

The stick involves financing a more cooperative opponent for your seat - either the seat you seek, or the seat you hold. Tom "Dancing With the Stars" DeLay (and stay tuned for some more Tommi revelry when I get half a minute to put it together) ruled the House with that bludgeon. And that is another excuse that even the best-intentioned politicians can use to kid themselves and justify toeing the corporate line - "Well, if I don't go along, then I'll lose my seat to someone who may be worse - at least I can try to mitigate it and do some damage control. The person who takes my seat might be a 100% corporate tool all the way, but (insert rationalization here)". This is what we are seeing now with the Dems and Obama.

We need to overhaul the way our campaigns are financed - it's by the public; for the public; and it has to be with public money. The same with election and voting machines - these cannot be run on private proprietary software! How the hell can we even allow that to happen? Proprietary voting machine software owned by a corporation with a political agenda? Who the fuck thought that was OK?

So, we need to understand at a basic, gut level why these two issues - corporate personhood and campaign finance - must be addressed to get any kind of change enacted. Otherwise, we're spinning our wheels in a muddy ditch - and wondering why we're not moving forward.

Woo Hoo! Just Got My Review Copy of David Swanson's New Book "Daybreak"!

2009-08-31T21:16:00.000-07:00

May 3, 2005.

I read an article that floored me.

Raw Story reported that Rep. John Conyers had written a letter signed by eighty-eight members of Congress, calling for "deeper inquiry" into a secret Iraq attack plan that had been discussed by the US and the UK in 2002, long before Congress had been consulted or authorization sought, according to a document soon to be called the "Downing Street Memo", although they were technically the minutes of a meeting chaired by Tony Blair to discuss military action towards Iraq, "having already committed himself to supporting President Bush's plans for invading Iraq." "A separate secret briefing for the meeting said that Britain and America had to 'create' conditions to justify a war."

But the line that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up was "A British official 'reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.' "

'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'

Somehow, that report just set off all my alarm bells. I could not get those words out of my head. Yet, in the mainstream media, nary a peep! It was all about the runaway googly-eyed bride and that endless, cascading fountain of infotainment dollars - a pathetic, pajama-clad Michael Jackson and his sad, humiliating trial.

But there were a few progressives that were onto the Downing Street Memo, and at the forefront of these was David Swanson and his new website AfterDowningStreet.org, which mobilized immediately to become the center of the movement to draw attention to a document that, in any kind of a just world, would have yanked Cheney and Bush from office, hauled them into court, and clapped them into jail.

I immediately bookmarked that site as the 'go-to' place for all things Downing Street, and followed the work and activism of Swanson as he cut a mighty swath through the jungle of lies, red herrings, distractions and obfuscations thrown up around the subject.

Fast-forward to September 2008 and the release of my book The Price of Right. David Swanson gave me my first review, and though it was not uniformly glowing I thought it was fair, made some good points deserving of consideration and in general positive rather than negative. I was thrilled to have him review it.

Fast-forward another year, and now David's own book, Daybreak - Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, will be out tomorrow, September 1. He was kind enough to send me a review copy which I just got in the mail today, and am going to be staying up all night to read, so I can get my review out as soon as possible. He prefaces his book with an I.F. Stone quote that really resonates with me, because I feel the exact same way:

“The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it.”

After all, what kind of a fight is it if you're guaranteed success? That's not a fight; that's the WWF. It's entertainment; it's self-indulgence; it's dilettantism. There's no valor in fighting for something when you already know you're going to prevail. The forces of entrenched wealth and entrenched power and corporatism that we are up against are so strong, so massive, and so pervasive that to think that all we have to do is wave a few signs to bring them down is ludicrous. This may well be the fight of our lives, and we have to be okay with continuing to fight even when we don't obtain our objective right when we want it and think we ought to have it.

But let's not forget that it has been done before, and it can be done again.

I'll be back as soon as I can with the 'official' review. In the meantime...David says:

If everyone buys it on Tuesday, September 1st, at Amazon.com, it will jump to the top of the political bestsellers there, displacing Glenn Beck. Here's the link:
http://tinyurl.com/daybreakbook

Even though I already have my copy, I'm going to buy one, just for the satisfaction of kicking some Glenn Beck ass.

Thank You, Senator Edward Kennedy, For Your Lifetime of Service

2009-08-26T09:58:00.000-07:00

Senator Ted Kennedy - the greatest senator this country has ever had.

I need to take some time to write about this - my heart is too full right now.

Please, everyone - let us honor Senator Kennedy's unstinting support and love for the American working man and woman by redoubling our efforts to fight for health care for all. Basic health care is a right, not a privilege for the privileged only. We are up against massively rich and powerful corporations who are battling for their own lives, but we cannot let the magnitude of the task before us stop our efforts.

I'm Playing at Netroots Nation in Second Life - Come On Down!

2009-08-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

Ever since I first started blogging in 2004, I've wanted to go to Yearly Kos, which has now grown into Netroots Nation. I am a person whose life has been profoundly transformed by blogging and the people I've met through it, so a conference for progressive activism hosted by bloggers is one that I have longed to go to.

We are in the midst of a revolution in how information is transmitted, and bloggers have been at the forefront of it. I don't mean to wax melodramatic about it, but blogging and bloggers have changed politics in America, and given a voice to ordinary people in a way that was not possible before the Internet.

Every year I've hoped to be able to swing the Netroots conference, but never could pull it together to go. I have been fortunate enough to be invited to the Americans United for Separation of Church and State conference in DC the last 2 years, where I got to meet some of my very favorite bloggers in person - and, yes; they're all - without exception - as wonderful in person as they are online. So being able to go to the Big Kahuna of blogger meet-ups - the place where blogging meets real-world progressive activism - would be a dream come true. Because that, of course, is the goal - writing is all very wonderful, but writing that culminates in and intersects with boots-on-the-ground work is what it's really all about.

And, no, I won't be going to Pittsburgh.

But I will get to experience it through Second Life, and I'm scheduled to perform at Netroots Nation in Second Life!

I'll be doing an hour of music before Markos Moulitsas' speech on Thursday - I'll be playing from 5:45 to 6:45 PM - and after Bill Clinton gives the keynote speech at 3:00!

I am really jazzed about this - it's the next best thing to being there! Even if you're not able to be in Second Life, you can still catch the live stream. As of right now I don't know if I'll be using my server or theirs, but when I find out I will post the link here. Then you can just click on the link and listen.

But if you, like me, want to go but can't make it to Pittsburgh, I'd like to invite you to give Second Life a try - just for the conference. The NNSL team is organizing a special event for people who aren't usually Second Lifers who can't go to Pittsburgh but would like to experience Netroots Nation in 3D. Netroots Nation in Second Life will be streaming video from the conference - you'll get to see and hear the speakers, the workshops, the panels, the documentaries - plus special presentations that are just in Second Life (like my music - ha!)

Since they're expecting a large group of people who are brand-new to Second Life, there is a whole contingent of volunteers who will be there to help you get around and show you what to do. I can't think of a better time to give Second Life a try, with all the help for new folks available, and to experience the inspiration and excitement of Netroots Nation live and in 3D - for free, in the comfort of your own home! It's the best of both worlds, and I'm thrilled and honored to be a part of it.

I'm including some links that will give you some info about getting started. My friend BookemJackson Streeter (also known as SeattleTammy), a real-life independent bookseller, is the one who got me going in Second Life, and she is one of the main volunteers who are helping people get situated for NNSL. If you get in touch with her, either through her blog or in Second Life (search for BookemJackson Streeter and IM her), she will get you rolling in no time at all. These are Tammy's posts about SL.

Also, check out this link for a comprehensive overview about Second Life for Netroots Nation. Very informative!

Sewenviro (Mala Fegte) has another great diary, and Stormy does too.

Those of you that have come to my online shows with just audio, I'd like to invite you to the whole show with Idella Quandry in Second Life. It really is a cool way to share the live music experience.

Hope to see you there!

So Beautiful It Made Me Cry

2009-07-24T21:09:00.000-07:00

Is this a social blog? No. Do I post YouTube stuff here? No. Is this I Can Haz Cheezburger? No. I don't do LOLcats here. But this wedding video was so beautiful it made me cry. What an original and joyous way to start your married life.

In Which My Virtual Self and Real Self Meet: Netroots Nation In Second Life - August 13-16, 2009

2009-07-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

For the past few months I have been leading a Second Life. SL is an avatar-based virtual world - sort of a 3-D video chat room, if you will - where people with common interests can get together and create a virtual environment, complete with tools for integrating streaming audio, video, chat, IM, some web, and various sorts of social media. I joined because of my friend General JC Christian, who started a progressive group there called Cafe Wellstone, and did a virtual book signing there at Jackson Street Books, but soon found out that there was music in Second Life also. I began doing live gigs there singing and playing keyboards, streaming audio in real time for a real audience that I could see and interact with - albeit with a 7-second delay!

I wrote about my Second Life gigs as the lovely Idella Quandry a little while ago, so I won't belabor them, other than to let you know that I am now doing a regular Thursday night online from 8-10 PST (which, fortunately for me, is Second Life time as well) and that you can tune in on the web as well as in Second Life. I'll put the info to hear it at the bottom of the post.

I love having a platform where I can do the two things that mean so much to me in the same arena - progressive activism and music - and coming up soon I will be doing both with Netroots Nation in Second Life. Netroots Nation, while originally Yearly Kos, has expanded to include many different sorts of online activism and communities, and will be holding its annual conference in Pittsburgh, PA on August 13-16. There will be a Second Life contingent of progressives who will share it with those who can't make it to the event physically.

Of course there will be blogging, and video, and all the other ways people usually communicate these things, but Second Life has a uniquely 'immersive' way of delivering the Netroots Nation experience to make you feel as if you're really a part of the conference. There will be streaming into Second Life of speakers and panels, interviews, videos and workshops - and there will be also special events streaming out of Second Life into the live Netroots Nation. I'm going to have a booth there for this blog, my book and my music, and will also be playing live at some time to be determined later.

Because of blogging and the web, I was able to connect with people all over the world, and write a book about a subject that I deeply believe in - making a case for progressive values. To me this is taking the next logical step in communication - and finding a way to reach 'hearts and minds' with grassroots activism, and share information in a way that would have been unthinkable before the Internet. So I hope I'll be able to connect with you all - maybe at Netroots Nation in Second Life, or maybe you'll catch my live stream. If you do, be sure and let me know - email, comment, Facebook - whatever! I'd love to hear from you.

Tomorrow night - Thursday - Idella plays at Artistic Diversion in Second Life from 8-10 PM PST.

The web address for my streaming server is:

http://idella.serverroom.us:4254

and you can click on the 'Listen' link to hear the stream. Note: it will only be active when I am actually playing, so if you go there when I'm not playing, you won't hear anything.

See you in cyberspace!

Jimmy Carter: Losing His Religion, Keeping His Faith

2009-07-22T21:24:00.000-07:00

Jimmy Carter, once again, proves that he knows - and lives - the true meaning of Christianity. A couple of days ago he wrote an article called "Losing My Religion For Equality". The lede is "Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God." In the article, he lays out the reasons that he is severing his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention after 60 years of membership.

My heart goes out to him. I can only imagine how difficult that must have been. As a former Catholic and present liberal Christian (who is not quite smart enough to be an atheist) I have eschewed any formal denomination, because of the actions of many who call themselves Christians. I am a Christian because I believe the teachings of Jesus show the way to the highest, most moral and sane way to live. I also know that many who call themselves Christian will say that I'm not one. But they're right - hopefully, I'm not the same kind of Christian that they are.

My mother left the Catholic Church in the mid-60s. It was an agonizing decision for her to make, but she made that choice after much painful soul-searching and self-examination, realizing that there were just too many things that the Church demanded that she accept without question, and too many areas of her life that the Church wanted to control that had nothing whatsoever to do with faith, and God. She subsequently joined the Unitarian Universalist fellowship, where she found a spiritual and community home, and is active in UU to this day. After we were suddenly 'non-Catholic' I had no further interest in a church, not even UU, and did not consider any kind of faith until I was a young adult, when I began investigating many other world religions. I came back around to Christianity my own convoluted way, beginning with the Twelve Steps and proceeding to the Sermon on the Mount. I find that having a spiritual life helps me to be the person I would like to be, and helps me to find the strength and peace within that sustains me through whatever trials I go through.

But religion and faith aren't necessarily the same thing. Jimmy Carter's belief in God shows how real faith can express itself in the life of a human being. And sometimes that faith must transcend religion to be true to itself. By leaving the SBC, I believe he became closer to the Prince of Peace - and that's the kind of Christianity to which I aspire.

Thanks, Governator - No Taxes for Corps, No CSUN For Sam

2009-07-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

I picked up my son last night from a jazz jam session at Cal State Northridge, the college that he was planning on attending, and that the director of the jazz band was helping him get in to.

"How did it go?" I asked him, noticing that his body language was not what it usually was after playing music. He was slumped, silent, as he got into the car.

"Not so good," he replied. Not so good? How could a jam not be good?

"I'm not getting into CSUN," he said. "The director said that the budget cuts had eliminated the place he was getting me into." He was afraid I'd be mad at him. I just hugged him, speechless.

I've been meaning for a while to post about the real-life effects of the implementation of 'conservative values', which is the basic premise of my book The Price of Right. Since the systematic dismantling of the New Deal beginning with Reagan, wages have not kept pace with prices, and the idea that the government is the enemy and Big Business is your friend has replaced the idea of government as a mechanism of the people to "promote the general welfare" of the country as a whole - in other words, to do collectively what is not possible to do individually, such as police, fire departments, defense, national infrastructure. If profit is the only motivator, why provide these things to less-than-profitable markets? This is the whole point of 'insurance' - to pool resources so that all may benefit. (Or does it only work when a company stands to make a profit from it?) But the myth of the invincibility of the 'free market' (which is not at all free or fair) has superseded the idea that we as a nation can meet our own needs. The idea that private is always better and more efficient than public has turned out disastrously for all but those who 'corner the market'. Collective bargaining has been replaced by paternalism and 'hoping for the best'. The balance between public and private has become completely lopsided, and the casualties have been those who can least afford it.

Case in point - in California, the UC system, once the crown jewel of America's higher education - a state which once pledged to make college free and available to all Californians, and succeeded - has now been slashed to the bone by the Governator, along with health and human services, so as not to offend corporations by (Heaven forbid) raising taxes. And the fed refuses to help California, while it bails out private marauders. And the marauders themselves, fat with the largess of the American taxpayer? Ellen Brown says:

Four Wall Street banks, which received $15-25 billion each from the taxpayers, have rejected California's IOUs because the State is supposedly a bad credit risk. The bailed out banks would seem to have a duty to lend a helping hand, but they say they don't want to delay an agreement on further austerity measures. State legislators are not bowing quickly to the pressure, but what is the alternative?

In the latest twist to the California budget saga, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase (which each got $25 billion in bailout money from the taxpayers) and Bank of America (which got $15 billion) have refused California's request for a loan to tide it over until October. Until the State can get things sorted out, it has started paying its creditors in IOUs ("I Owe You's" or promises to pay bearing interest, technically called registered warrants). Its Wall Street creditors, however, have refused to take them. Why? The pot says the kettle is a poor credit risk!

California expects to need to issue only about $13 billion in IOUs through September, and all its Governor has asked for in the way of a loan from the federal government is a guarantee for $6 billion. Total loans, commitments and guarantees to rescue the financial sector and stem the credit crisis have been estimated at $12.8 trillion. But California has not been invited to the banquet. The total sum California needs to balance its budget is $26.3 billion. That is about the same sum given to Citigroup, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan in bailout money; and it is only about one-tenth the sum given to AIG, a mere insurance company. Corporations evidently trump States and their citizens in the eyes of the powers controlling the purse strings. California has a gross domestic product of $1.7 trillion annually and has been rated the world's eighth largest economy. Its 38.3 million people are one-eighth of the nation's population and a key catalyst for U.S. retail sales. When the California consumer base falters, businesses are shaken nationwide. If AIG and the other Wall Street welfare recipients are too big to fail, California is way too big to fail.

I am sick to death of the idea of "what's good for business is good for America".

Guess what? It's not!

Greed is not good. Greed has put us where we are today. And greed continues to take us down - greed disguised as 'personal responsibility', greed disguised as the 'invisible hand of the free market', greed disguised as the metaphor 'wealth=morality'.

And the Governator is following obediently in Reagan's footsteps; first, destroy California's university system, then prop up the corporations on the backs of the poor and the sick.

St. Ronnie must be so proud of how you're Terminating Cali, Mr. Governator! I'm sure he's smiling down on you from his fluffy cloud in the sky.

Wait - no; it's only gas.

Single Payer - Marcy Winograd's Excellent Article!

2009-06-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

Read Marcy Winograd's great blog post on Single Payer health care.

The insurance companies are fighting for their lives - they are cornered and therefore the most dangerous. They (and their cronies) are trying to paint Single Payer advocates (i.e. most Americans!) as some kind of marginal, fringe loonies. And the concept of the 'public/private partnership' is a recipe for failure.

There are no federal government cost projections for single payer. If there were, we would see that the beneficiaries would be the public. But we do have the projections for public/private.

Marcy writes:

"(W)e do know the cost projections for the current proposal, the Affordable Choices Act, a hybrid concoction of private insurance and the so-called “public option” which funnels billions into private for-profit insurance companies. In a June 15th letter to Senator Kennedy, the primary sponsor of this legislative effort, Douglas Elmendorf, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, estimated the proposal would result in a trillion-dollar federal deficit over a ten year period. And that amount could only be offset by increased taxes, payment penalties for the uninsured, and cuts in Medicaid—hardly the way toward health care for all.
Instead of taxpayer money paying for actual health care under the public option, most of it, according to the CBO letter, would pay insurance companies to pay for health care. To make matters worse, this subsidy to the insurance industry requires dramatic cuts in Medicare, a program that should be expanded, not curtailed.

But here’s the real kicker. At the end of the decade, in 2019, under a private insurance/public option proposal, 36,000,000 Americans, as opposed to the current 45,000,000, would still be uninsured, according to the CBO. Because the draft legislation includes an “individual responsibility” clause, anyone who couldn’t afford to pay for coverage could face steep fines. Much like mandated drivers’ insurance, this system would be a boon to private insurers reaping the benefits of the new law requiring everyone to get health coverage.

On top of that there would be more marginalization. Cancer patients who couldn’t get private insurance coverage on their own would be pushed onto the public rolls, thereby saddling taxpayers with having to subsidize insurance policies for the seriously ill. In time, the public option, weighed down by this tax burden and unable to fully exercise bulk purchasing power, would collapse amidst a fiery congressional storm over the cost of the public option, thus legitimizing arguments that publicly-funded health care is a failed idea."

And that's it, folks. They are desperate to prove publicly-funded health care as a failure, and they don't care if they have to take the rest of us down with it.

Read more about Marcy Winograd's 2010 Congressional run against Jane Harman in the CA 36th here:

Winograd For Congress

If you're a progressive, the more you know about Marcy, the more you like!

A Thought - Republicans: Please, Just Don't.

2009-06-30T16:52:00.000-07:00

If you are a Republican, please do not speak about election fraud. Ever.

Please, just don't.

The Words I Can't Wait To Hear Out Of Billo's Pie Hole - "Senator Al Franken"!

2009-06-30T14:23:00.000-07:00

Oh my.

The day has finally arrived in which, from this day henceforth, Bill O'Reilly will be forced to utter three of the sweetest words in the English language:

"Senator Al Franken"!

Mmmmm-mm-mmm-mmm, good!

Of course, BlueGal tweets: "Limbaugh says Franken election just like Ahmadinejad's. There are no words."

Shameless Self-Promotion 1.0 - Gigging in the San Francisco Bay Area on July 4!

2009-06-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

To all my Bay Area friends - I'll be up your way next week!

We're coming up on Friday the 3rd and will be there for the weekend.

My husband and I are playing at a club called Rassela's

July 4th, 2009

1534 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, California 94115
Telephone Number: 415.346.8696

I would love to see you! Even if you can't make the gig, maybe we can meet for coffee or whatevs! But the gig is going to be a blast. Let me know if you are coming down so I can put you on the list.

Shameless Self-Promotion 2.0 - Performing Online Tonight In Real Time!

2009-06-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

Come hear my gig online tonight~~

For the last couple of months, I have been doing some live streaming performance online in Second Life, a virtual online community, through my avatar Idella Quandry. I found out about Second Life through my friend General JC Christian, patriot, over at Jesus' General and while I initially joined to participate in Cafe Wellstone, a Second Life progressive group, I soon found that there is a lot of great music going on in SL as well, and was encouraged by my friends there to give it a try.

Since blogging opened up a huge new world for me, creating many real-life friendships and opportunities (like my book!), I have been interested in untilizing new ways to communicate, and Second Life has let me combine my three big passions - music, progressive politics, and computers - in a very interesting way. For most of my musical life, I have worked in bands; I have not done a whole lot of solo music. But here in Second Life, I am doing online concerts with just me and my keyboard - sometimes using tracks that I make myself on the more up-tempo tunes. I am enjoying the opportunity to do something outside of my comfort zone!

I play a show very much like one would do in real-life; there's an audience of real people listening, who I can see and interact with. From my studio, I send the music to a streaming audio server, which goes to my Second Life venue. There is a 15-30 second delay, which takes some getting used to, but other than that it's no different for me than playing in real-life - except that my avatar is much cuter than I am :) and has all the cool equipment.

Not only that - but even if you are not on Second Life, you can still catch the audio for the show online!

That's right; if you would like to attend one of my online shows, you can go to the web address of the stream and hear it online in real time!

I am playing tonight (Thursday June 25) from 8-10 PM Pacific Time (which is also Second Life time) at a lovely venue called Artistic Diversion. Tomorrow night (Friday June 26) I will be playing at a SL blues club called Not Too Hot. All of the Second Life information is on Idella's Ning site - http://idella.ning.com

If you want to catch the streaming audio live at these times from the web, you can go to my streaming server and click on 'listen' :

http://idella.serverroom.us:4254

and if you want to communicate with me in real-time via IM, you can Google chat with me at idella.quandry@gmail.com - I'll have the chat window up! I'm on the lookout for a better and more accessible chat application, so if you know of one, let me know and I'll change.

Single-Payer Health Care - Can We 'Fight the Power'?

2009-06-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

The problem with health care has nothing to do with health care.

The problem is the same problem we have with every issue of importance in this country - corporate money, which equals corporate influence.

Any legislator who wants what's best for the American people instead of what will further enrich the corporations - who have inserted the necessity for a 'profit margin' for people who do not themselves provide health care, but who profit through denying it - is quickly reminded that supporting single-payer health insurance will lead, not only to the loss of campaign money, but to the supporting of the candidacy of an opponent more amenable to the corporate point of view.

Make no mistake, friends - once you reach the hallowed halls of public office, the principles that impelled you to seek that office come smack up against the power structure in Washington. It's easy to make impassioned campaign promises based on your convictions, but not so easy to implement them once you get there. Too much money and power is at stake in the lucrative fields of private insurance, for-profit hospitals and Big Pharma.

Single-Payer is not "government-run medicine". We already have that in the VA system, where the providers work directly for and are paid by the government. Single-Payer is simply having one administrative body that pays health providers. Here's the Wikipedia definition of single-payer:

Single-payer health care is a term used in the United States to describe the payment of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers from a single fund. It differs from typical private health insurance where, through pricing and other measures taken by the insurer, the level of risks carried by multiple insurance pools as well as the coverage can vary and the pricing has to be varied according to the contribution of risk added to the pool. It is often mentioned as one way to deliver universal health care. The administrator of the fund could be the government but it could also be a publicly owned agency regulated by law.

Here's more about single-payer from Physicians for a National Health Program.

Insurance works by pooling risk. The larger the pool, the less each participant has to pay. But private, for-profit insurance companies game the system and boost their profits by excluding those who actually need medical care from their pools. Having a 'pre-existing condition' automatically disqualifies you from most private insurers. The result is that most Americans - even comfortably middle-class Americans - are one major illness away from bankruptcy.

This is absolutely criminal. Physicians for a National Health Program's tagline is "Health Care is a Human Right", and I believe that. Not only is it a human right, but it is beneficial for our country to have a healthy populace. The money saved by people being able to have access to preventive care, and comprehensive care when they need it would be staggering. If you are able to catch an illness such as cancer by a regular screening and early detection, instead of in a late stage which requires millions of dollars in treatment - do the math! If you are able to be treated by a doctor when you need it instead of ending up with a $100,000 emergency room bill because you don't have insurance - do the math! If you are able to get stay healthy, you won't be spreading disease to other healthy people. And don't forget about productivity; healthy people contribute a lot more to the economy than sick people - do the math!

But, unfortunately, these benefits conflict with insurance companies' needs. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with profit - except when it comes at the expense of peoples' lives. And health care is life-and-death. There are plenty of areas in which private insurance works - automobiles, homes, electronic gadgets - things that you choose to have, not that you have to have. The insurance industry is so large, wealthy and influential that they have managed to keep single-payer out of the national healthcare dialogue. They can be expected to do nothing else - they are fighting for their very survival. But the death of a corporation is not the same as the death of a human being. Corporations can come back to life.

So how can we fight this power?

By knowledge. By information. By numbers. By communication. By determination in the face of overwhelming odds against us. The more we talk about it, look into it for ourselves, and not just take the word of those who have a vested interest in the status quo, the more power we have.

The impact that Twitter has had upon the Iranian situation tells us that communication can change things. No, Twitter did not single-handedly transform public opinion - but it made a difference. And enough 'differences' add up - not immediately, but cumulatively. We're seeing it happen - not as fast as we'd like, but it's happening.

I'm going to a Nationwide Health Outreach meeting this Saturday in Van Nuys, sponsored by PDLA and other local progressive groups. We need to make enough noise that our elected representatives cannot ignore our voices. Since we can't funnel cash like the big boys, we have to give our representatives enough carrot and stick so that they are able to say, "I have to vote for single payer - my constituents will kick me out if I don't."

Like FDR before him, Obama said "Make me do it."

Marcy Winograd For Congress - This Time It's ON!!!

2009-05-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone - I'm back.

I haven't been blogging much in the last couple of months because keeping our family's financial head above water has been taking up my time 24/7 - physically, mentally and emotionally. I won't go into the gory details, and we're still not 'out of the woods', but we're hanging onto our house for a little while longer, and that's good enough for me. Eight years of the tsunami that was the Bush Administration (and 30 years of 'trickle-down') has taken its toll on us, and, like so many other supposedly 'middle class' families, we're one emergency away from bankruptcy (that is, if we're lucky! - thanks, Bankruptcy Bill of 05). Financial stress has a way of eclipsing everything else in your life, and I just feel so lucky that my husband and I have made a pact to not allow financial troubles to damage our relationship, but to use it to pull closer together. So the last couple of months have been about personal and family survival, which is not a bad thing.

Now, I have an important reason to be back on the blog scene - Marcy Winograd has officially launched her Congressional race to challenge Jane Harman once again!

I have been a supporter of Marcy's since I learned about her three years ago and joined as a volunteer for her first campaign. My friend DivaJood told me about Marcy and I was anxious to know more about this teacher/activist who was going up against the incumbent, well-financed and hawkish Jane Harman for California's 36th Congressional District seat. Marcy is a true progressive - a strong peace activist, an advocate for single-payer health care, Marcy supported a woman's right to choose; legalization of gay marriage; workers' right to organize (bipartisan Employee Free Choice Act ); decriminalization of immigration; abolishment of the death penalty and censure and impeachment of Bush and Cheney for high crimes relating to the war in Iraq and for attacks on civil liberties, including illegal wiretapping. That sure sounded better than supporting the military/industrial complex and giving Bush the green light as Harman did. As much as I hate phone solicitation - not to mention phones! - I did phone-banking for Marcy. Volunteering for her campaign took me the next step - from blogging to physical action. I joined Progressive Dems of America and the group that Marcy presided over which was Prog Dems of LA, and from there began to work locally, in my own community.

Marcy Winograd entered the race with only 3 months to go before the election in 2006, as a complete political unknown, yet served up a serious challenge to Harman, garnering 38% of the vote. This time around, Marcy is ready! She has continued to stay active since the last race and now has name recognition, supporters, and a whole year to work on the campaign and introduce herself and her positions to CA's 36th and to the rest of America.

Her website is still under construction, but for a great introduction to Marcy and what she's all about, check out yesterday's FireDogLake for a discussion with Marcy, where she takes questions from all comers!

She also has a Facebook page up for the campaign - Marcy Winograd for Congress.

I've gotten to know Marcy personally over this time, and the more I know, the more I like! One thing I hate about our political system is that the requirements for getting and holding onto public office seem to preclude anyone of character and ideals becoming elected, but every once in a while, you come across the exception - Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Donna Edwards, people like that.

I know, not 'believe', that Marcy is that kind of exception.

She is someone of strength of character and firm convictions who is gutsy enough to stand up for what's right, whether it's popular or not. She doesn't water down her ideals in order to get over. She is intelligent and passionate, and has always walked her talk. She teaches English at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles, which makes her a hero in my book without public office! She is warm-hearted and caring, as anyone who talks to her for five minutes finds out, yet tough enough to stand her ground. I can't imagine a better person to have in public office. We need her badly - even those of us who do not live in her district.

Now, for my cool news - Marcy has asked me to sing at her campign kickoff rally tomorrow! It's Monday, May 11, at the Venice Pier at 4:00 in the afternoon.

I am so very thrilled and honored. Marcy has supported and encouraged me over the last few years as well, both with my book and my music. I sang at her mother Teddi 's memorial (Teddi Winograd was an incredible woman and progressive supporter - the apple did not fall far from the tree!) and although events of the past few months have resulted in everything else going onto the back burner, inculding promoting my book, Marcy has been in my corner ready to help out whenever I could get it together :). So I can't tell you how excited I am to be able to be a part of her campaign launch!

Those of you in the LA area - come say hi! It's going to be an inspirational afternoon, I know that much!

It's ON, bitchez!

***update*** Thanks to Mike from Crooks and Liars for the mention, and to SeattleTammy for the link!

Just For Fun

2009-03-27T17:21:00.000-07:00

...and because I'm a mindless follower who would happily jump off a cliff if my other friends were jumping too -

...and because Sprawling Ramshackle Compound brings back warm, fuzzy memories of my Florida home -

...and because those of us of Irish extraction must hang together -

Please vote for Nora O'Sullivan for Spooksmodel of the Year at Fangoria! She's a doll. The kind of doll that you never ever want to find under your Christmas tree - if you expect to ring in the New Year, that is! Scroll down to her picture and vote early and often!

Update: I just heard from the lovely and talented Nora herself - she came in at third place! She's going to LA with the rest of the lucky 13, and there will be another round of voting. When that happens, I will post again, and recruit more vote-zombies!

The City that Ended Hunger

2009-03-26T16:27:00.000-07:00

I don't usually post articles verbatim, but this one blew me away.

Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market—you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.
The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources—the “participatory budgeting” that started in the 1970s and has since spread across Brazil. During the first six years of Belo’s food-as-a-right policy, perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of citizens engaging in the city’s participatory budgeting process doubled to more than 31,000.
The city of Belo Horizonte puts “Direct From the Country” farmer produce stands throughout busy downtown areas.
Photo by Leah Rimkus
The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce—which often reached 100 percent—to consumers and the farmers. Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.

'Food as a right'. It makes sense to me. As humans, we owe that to one another, especially when there is enough to go around. Frances Moore Lappé, the writer of this article, put it well:

"In writing Diet for a Small Planet, I learned one simple truth: Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy."

Like health care, there is a minimum subsistence level that every person deserves simply by being human. If you want to call that socialism, fine by me. 'Private charity' is not the whole answer, because then it becomes dependent on personal generosity, which can fluctuate, and it can become a 'moral issue' in which a superior deigns to throw a crumb to an inferior. The donation depends upon the good will of the person doing the donating, and often entails conditions put upon the donation.

Sure, there will always be people who will 'take advantage' of public support, but I believe that, since the majority of people in need are not in need because of laziness or irresponsibility, but are in need because of circumstances beyone their control, it is unfair to deny help to those who need it because of the relatively small percentage of people who take advantage of the system. And, as the article mentions, it is beneficial to society as a whole if everyone is fed, just like it is beneficial to society when everyone is educated.

Hey, Bailout Honchos - What Is It About Working Men and Women That You Find So Offensive?

2009-03-16T22:25:00.000-07:00

(Thanks, Teddy!)

Oh, it's a darn rotten shame that AIG is using taxpayer money to pay bonuses to the very people who have flushed these same taxpayers down the crapper. Really, it's just awful - terrible. Oh, my. But - unfortunately, these executives have contracts, you see! So, even though it makes us all mad as heck (grrr!), I'm afraid we'll just have to let them have their bonuses. We can't break their contracts, now, can we? You understand, now, don't you? Why, they might sue us if we don't let them have their bonuses! We can't take the risk of making these executives mad, now, can we? After all, we are a country of laws!

Glenn Greenwald says:

Larry Summers, Sunday, on AIG’s payment of executive bonuses:

We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts. Every legal step possible to limit those bonuses is being taken by Secretary Geithner and by the Federal Reserve system.

Associated Press, February 18, 2009:

The United Auto Workers’ deal with Detroit’s three automakers limits overtime, changes work rules, cuts lump-sum cash bonuses and gets rid of cost-of-living pay raises to help reduce the companies’ labor costs, people briefed on the agreement said today.

The UAW announced Tuesday that it reached the tentative agreement with General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co. over contract concessions, as GM and Chrysler sent plans to the Treasury Department asking for a total of $39 billion in government financing to help them survive.

Concessions with the union are a condition of the $17.4 billion in government loans that the automakers have received so far.

Apparently, the supreme sanctity of employment contracts applies only to some types of employees but not others.

Hmmm.

Oh Larry Summers - I'm so glad to have a people's champion like you in charge of the bailouts. Good thing you're on our side! Your fierce tsk-tsk-ing and ferocious finger-wagging must have AIG just shaking in their boots.

With laughter.

Oh yes - these valuable, brilliant executives must be paid these grotesquely huge bonuses - otherwise, we'll lose them!

Heaven forbid. Who wouldn't do whatever it takes to attract and retain such stellar performers? The 'best and brightest'? Yeah - like a California wildfire. Best at what? Oh, right - best at stealing money.

I really can't find the words to say how much I despise these people.

Bree Walker for Bay Area Progressive Talk - Green 960

2009-03-13T20:10:00.000-07:00

VOTE HERE FOR BREE!

There is an opening in the schedule at San Francisco's Green 960, in the afternoon drive-time slot, and I think my friend Bree Walker would be a perfect fit. The program director there, John Scott, likes her work, but she needs to have at least a few hundred e-mails sent to the station to even be considered for a shot at a tryout. Bree is a passionate, fiercely intelligent, informed and committed progressive voice, and a respected news professional (both TV and radio) and I think she would be just right on Green 960. She is up against some tough competition with much larger email lists and publicity tools, so if you could take a sec and send a quick e-mail or vote in the station's contest, it would be much appreciated.

Send your emails to John Scott at john@green960.com. A good subject line would be "Bree Walker for 4-7pm" or something along those lines.

Also, you can vote at the station's website - just choose Bree Walker from the list.

Thanks!

Quote of the Day

2009-03-06T14:17:00.001-08:00

“A conservative is someone who believes the problem with our economy is that poor people have too much money.” - Bob Orben, speechwriter for Gerald Ford

In Which Another Rabble Is Roused!

2009-03-05T22:22:00.000-08:00

A nice surprise today. I ran into my friend and co-worker John in the teachers' lounge. John is an amazing bass player and teacher - years ago we played together in a TV-show band; now I teach at the school he has been teaching at for a long time, and we run into each other occasionally between classes. John has a razor-sharp and relentlessly curious mind and is very well-informed about things most people have never even heard of. When we were gigging together, he was always telling me about something interesting he had read about or heard on public radio (which I was not especially clued into at the time, and not the least bit politically active.)

I remember one short conversation we had in passing a while back - he had read Tom "Porn-Stache" Friedman's book The World is Flat and was (understandably) a little bummed about the seeming inevitability of the race to the bottom that the powers-that-be have forced us into. It's hard not to get discouraged when the "serious" people assure us that outsourcing, low-wage living and serfdom is the only future we have to look forward to, so we might as well get used to it, quit kicking, and face reality. I was in the middle of writing The Price of Right and wished we had time to talk about it, since I was in the middle of chewing through the sixty-five political/sociological/historical/psychology books I read in the process of researching my own book. But we were both on our way to class, so there wasn't an opportunity to get into it.

When the book came out, I gave John a copy, and today I see him in the break room. He said that he liked the book, which of course I was glad to hear. But what really made me feel like I've done something worth doing is that he's mad again! He told me that he had given me a shout-out on his blog User-Is-Content - which, by the way, is a very cool and eclectic blog, and I highly recommend that you check it out. If you're interested in science, the environment, government, alternative technology and the politics of possibility - it has a Wired magazine feel to it without the forced graphical hipness - you will dig it for sure.

AM New York called me a "rabble-rouser" as if were some sort of criticism instead of a badge of honor to me. That's my real aim with this book - I want to rile up as many people as possible. Anger and outrage are exactly what is called for. And anger and outrage are constructive and lead to action, whereas apathy and withdrawal lead to paralysis. As I've said ad nauseum, I think it doesn't matter whether we can 'win' this thing or not - only that we stand up for what we believe, what we know is right. To not take action against what is wrong because it seems too difficult is the pussy way out, and if we sit on the sidelines, we deserve whatever we get, and have no right to complain.

And it's good to see someone as smart and ethical as John back in the game.

Buy Partisanship?

2009-02-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Here we go. Again. *sigh*

Sweet bleeding Christ on a corn-flake, what will it take for Dems to understand that there is a very important distinction between right and left?

The left believes that if both sides give a little, a compromise can be achieved that gives everyone something.

The right believes that to compromise is to abandon one’s principles.

This very basic distinction is at the core of the dynamic between Dems and Repubs, and it is why this scenario plays out the same way every single time.

This is one of the differences between the Strict Father frame and the Nurturant Parent frame, and one of the weaknesses of the Dem position. Because of a worldview that believes that all members of a society are entitled to having their position considered and figured into a final outcome - in other words, a democracy! - Democrats will attempt, as far as possible, to make room at the table for those who do not think like they do. And they believe that in doing so, the other side will reciprocate, and while no one will get all of what they want, everyone will get some of what they want.

And they’re always surprised and dismayed when they get cock-blocked and steamrolled by Republicans, who will fervently argue against what they fervently supported the previous month when their guy was on top. Witness Grampaw McPTSD calling the stimulus package “generational theft” - while the entire Bush administration was spent in allowing bloated, crooked corporations to rape and pillage the American taxpayer, leading to the collapse of the economy and saddling the next generation with the debt that the big fellas have no intention of paying themselves - privatizing profits and socializing losses. Or howling about being left out of the process by Dems, when their mantra while in the majority was “We won, you lost, so STFU”.

Well, duh.

How can the Dems expect anything different, when the worldview of the right insists that compromise means abandoning core principles?

You have to consider it from their viewpoint, which is black-and-white, good-vs-evil, right-vs-wrong. Remember that bumper sticker which said “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it”? To them, compromising with Dems is no different than negotiating with terrorists. If you truly, in your heart of hearts, believe that your cause is right, and others are wrong, why would you compromise? Would you say, “OK, terrorists, if you only kill 50 people a year instead of 500, we’ve got a deal”? No, you would not.

This is the view of the authoritarian follower, which largely skews Repub because the Repub point of view (might is right - he who has the gold makes the rules) speaks to this mindset in a way that reaches their need to be led by a strong father figure. One of the hallmarks of the conservative personality is discomfort with uncertainty and ambiguity, and a viewpoint that espouses strength, dominance and certainty is irresistible to them. These traits are diametrically opposed to questions, multiple points of view (especially ‘seeing it from the other guy’s perspective’) and admittance of uncertainty - all factors adults must deal with in a complex world.

And if you accept this premise - that those whose authority you embrace and accept are completely in the right, and those who do not believe are completely in the wrong - then compromise is not an option, is it? The corollary to this idea is that whatever is necessary to ensure the predominance of this point of view is acceptable, simply because their leaders are right. So it doesn’t matter what argument you use to achieve your objective, as long as you reach your goal. That’s why the Repubs can contradict themselves over and over with righteous wrath, a straight face, and a clear conscience.

This is also why ‘tolerance’, instead of being considered a positive value, is considered the Devil’s work. If other viewpoints are wrong, why ‘tolerate’ them?

Dems are up against this at every turn, yet they fail to recognize it for what it is. And when Dems (in power and out) attempt to placate Repubs by giving them concessions, they are seen as not only wrong, but weak as well. Remember how the Repubs repaid Bill Clinton for giving them the ‘welfare reform’ they demanded? They impeached him, because they have no respect for those they can dominate or intimidate. And that’s how they see compromise - as a weakness to be exploited.

I’m not sure that attempting to ‘buy partisanship’ by handing out goodies (the same ‘goodies’ that made us all sick) to Republicans from the cookie jar will do anything but embolden and unite them further. Bi-partisanship means one thing and one thing only to Republicans - Democrats giving up the booty. It’s like trying to quiet down a tantrum-throwing toddler by anxiously plying him with presents and candy - it only reinforces the idea that if he acts badly enough for long enough, he’ll get his way. The only thing Republicans respect is dominance, and I think that the only way Obama will be able to handle them is with a swat on the bottom and a seat in the corner.

Dems better wise up, rise up and start kicking a little ass, or the actions of Repubs during the Clinton years will seem like Democrat boot-licking by contrast.

Lead The Way

2009-01-30T08:54:00.000-08:00

My friend Marisol Delevie made a really cool video for a song that her husband Mitchel and my husband David wrote called "Lead the Way". I think it's perfect for this time.

Vote, Vote, Vote! Weblog Awards 2008

2009-01-10T21:37:00.000-08:00

Raise your liberal hand, and vote for our fine friends who are up for quite a few 2008 Weblog Awards! I was a finalist a couple of years ago, when I was much more active, but have slowed down to the point where I am a spectator and cheerleader for my pals who are still hitting it hard. It's an honor to be nominated, especially since this is a conservative-sponsored contest, so mayjah props to our lefty bloggers who are in it to win it!

Here are my picks:

Best Individual Blogger -D r i f t g l a s s
Best Humor Blog - Jon Swift
Best Comic Strip - Town Called Dobson
Best Liberal Blog - Blue Gal
Best Science Blog - Pharyngula and Bad Astronomy
Best Blog Design - Rin-Wendy.com
Best Very Large Blog - Jesus' General
Best Large Blog - skippy the bush kangaroo
Best Small Blog - Rumproast
Best Up-And-Coming Blog - Simply Left Behind

I am just tickled beyond belief that I am fortunate enough to count many of these fine bloggers among my good friends, honored to count others among my acquaintances, and all of them among my list of faves - every one of the highest quality! (My Best Blog Design pick is not a liberal or political blog, but I like it so much that I wanted to include it.)



The city of Belo Horizonte puts “Direct From the Country” farmer produce stands throughout busy downtown areas. Photo by Leah Rimkus